' 




















^'-^^^ 




b V 



'' <• V ^ "1?' ^ifflTOf ^, " ^. 







,\^ ->^^^/^''', ^ C'^ *'^ 




* • o , 










SM'v ^- ..^ ;:^IC^'» X/ /Jfe'v %.^' 




, ^ •.==55S:^h'^^ '^ .x^^ ^wr/^\ -^^ . 






.0 



V 




^T 68. 



Wendell Phillips: 



THE AGITATOR. 



BY 



CARLOS MARTYN, 

Editor of " American Reformer?,'^ and autJtor of " John Milton^^ *' Wm. E 

DodgCy' etc. 



WITH AN 



APPENDIX 

CONTAINING THREE OF THE ORATOR'S MASTERPIECES, NEVER BEFORl 
PUBLISHED IN BOOK FORM, VIZ. ; 

"THE LOST ARTS." 

•• DANIEL O'CONNELL." 

"THE SCHOLAR IN A REPUBLIC." 



REVISED EDITION. 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STA TES. 



FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, 

LONDON. NEW YORK, TORONTO, 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1890, by 

FUNK & WAGNALLS. 

In the Office of the Librariau ai Congress at Washington, D. C> 



Gift 

Mrs. Edwin O. Dinwiddie, 

Deo. 2o, 1935 



to.., PREFACE, 



Wendell Phillips was a citizen of the twentieth 
century sent as a sample to us of the nineteenth. 
There is not in biography another character more 
profoundly interesting and instructive. Whether 
judged by the length, variety, influence, or genius 
of his life, this man was unique. Fredrika Bremer 
said long ago : " The anti -slavery struggle will be 
the romance of American history." The Swedish 
novelist foretold that our future Sir Walter Scott 
would find in this ** debatable ground" the richest 
materials for his " Sixty Years Hence." But where 
was there in the "irrepressible conflict" a more 
heroic figure than Mr. Phillips ? 

Nor was his an isolated advocacy. He identified 
himself as inseparably with every other reform of 
the age. There was no exception. "He stood, " The 
Admirable Crichton"' of- progress. Would any one 
understand this centurj^ } Would he equip himself 
for usefulness ? Would he catch fire from contact 
with one of the purest, ablest, most inspiring of 
men ? Let him study and emulate the career of 
Wendell Phillips. 

Biography has been defined as the story of a single 
soul. But the narrative becomes complex, since in 
its passage a single soul touches many other souls. 



VI PREFACE. 

selves in and aided his task, the author expresses 
again, in this formal way, his earnest thanks. Let 
us hope the result may compensate the effort. It 
will, if Wendell Phillips shall live and breathe again 
before our eyes and in our souls as these pages are 
turned. 

Carlos Martyn. 

New York City, March, 1890. 



■^ 
* 



There, with one hand behind his back. 
Stands Phillips, buttoned in a sack, 
Our Attic orator, our Chatham ; 
Old fogies, when he lightens at 'em. 
Shrivel like leaves ; to him *tis granted 
Always to say the word that's wanted. 
So that he seems but speaking clearer 
The tip-top thought of every hearer ; 
Each flash his brooding heart lets fall. 
Fires what's combustible in all, 
And sends the applauses bursting in 
Like an exploded magazine. 
His eloquence no frothy show. 
The gutter's street-polluted flow. 
No Mississippi's yellow flood 
Whose shoalness can't be seen for mud ; 
So simply clear, serenely deep, 
So silent — strong its graceful sweep. 
None measures its unrippling force 
Who has not striven to stem its course. 

•—James Russell Lowell. 

The greatest praise government can win is, that its citizens 
know their rights and dare maintain them. The best use of 
good laws is to teach men to trample bad laws under their feet. 
On these principles I am willing to stand before the community 
in which I was born and brought up ; where I expect to live and 
die ; where, if I win any reputation, I expect to earn and keep 
it. As a sane man, as a Christian man, and as a lover of my 
country, I am willing to be judged by posterity. — Wendell 
Phillips. 

Mr. Phillips had all the qualities of a great orator : command 
of himself, warm sympathy, responsive intellect, splendid rep- 
artee, the power to flash, the power to hit close, the language 
of the people, a wonderful magnetism, and an earnestness that 
made him the unconscious hero of the cause he pleaded. — The 
Boston Herald* 



CONTENTS. 



BOOK I. 

MORNING. 

1811-1837, 

PAGK 

I. Genesis 15-24 

II. Environment 25-33 

til. Schooling 34-48 

IV. The Young Lawyer 49-56 

V. The Martyr Age 57-77 

VI. The New Client 78-85 

VII. In Faneuil Hall 86-102 



BOOK II. 

NOON. 

1838-1865. 

I, The Abolitionists — Men and Measures 105-115 

II. A Conundrum 116-121 

III. "Vale" 122-126 

IV. Scenes and Experiences in Europe 127-147 

V. No. 26 Essex Street 148-151 

VI. The Irish Address 152-158 

VII. A New Battle OF Concord 159-163 

VIII. The " Covenant with Death" i6';-i73 

IX. Infidelity IN the 'Forties 174-178 

X. The Agitator 179-188 

XI. Egeria 189-198 

XII. Concerning a Singular Epidemic. .. , 199-203 

XIII. Mr. Calhoun's Idea of Equilibrium 204-211 



X CONTENTS. 

FAGS 

XIV. Incidents 212-222 

XV. The Devil's Gospel 223-234 

XVI. The Women, and a Man 235-242 

XVII. Disjecta Membra 243-250 

XVIII. Good Works 251-258 

XIX. Portraits 259-266 

XX. Excitement 267-275 

XXI. Great Events 276-288 

XXII. *' Irrepressible Conflict" 289-299 

XXIII. The Winter OF Secession 300-311 

XXIV. Under THE Flag 312-322 

XXV, The Struggle of Two Civilizations 323-337 

XXVI. Shadow in Sunshine 338-345 



BOOK III. 

AFTERNOON. 

1866-1879. 

I. From Battle-field to ForuiM 349-365 

II. lo ! Triumphe ! , 366-376 

III. ** New Occasions Teach New Duties" 377-385 

IV. Living Issues 386-398 

V. Grant — Greeley — Froude 399-406 

VI. Olla Podrida 407-417 

VII. Usefulness 418 430 

VIII. The Radical Club 431-439 

IX. Lyceum Experiences 440-447 



BOOK IV. 

EVENING. 

1880-1884. 

I. Still Contending 451-469 

11. Lengthening Shadows 470-478 

III. Sundown 479-482 



CONTENTS. Xi 

PAGE 

IV. ** At Even-time it Shall be Light" 483-488 

V. The Orator 489-505 

VI. The Man 506-524 

VII. Phillipsiana 525-530 



• APPENDIX, 

** The Lost Arts" 533-547 

*' Daniel O'Connell" 548-569 

*• The Scholar in a Repubuc" 570-594 



INDEX * 595-600 



BOOK I. 



MORNING. 



1811-1837. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 



L 

GENESIS. 



The first American Phillips was an Englishman ; 
and so was the second. Since the family began on 
this side of the water in a paradoxical way, it is not 
strange that the most illustrious member of it should 
have been fond of paradoxes. 

The Rev. George Phillips was one of the band of 
conscience exiles who sailed from Great Britain for 
the new world, in 1630, in the "Arbella," with Win- 
throp and Saltonstall and Johnson ; this last a land- 
owner in three counties, after whose charming wife 
the chief vessel of the flotilla of ten ships was named.* 
Things were in a bad way over there, or seemed to 
be ; although, as is apt to be the case, it was darkest 
just before the dawn ; for within ten years Hampden 



' The common orthography is Arabella, but later writers almost 
unanimously reject this spelling, which is founded on the often-erring 
authority of Mather in the " Magnalia," and of Josselyn, and accept 
that of John Winthrop in his Diary, of Johnson, in the " Wonder- 
Working Providence," and of Dudley's Epistles. These men were 
personally acquainted with Mr Johnson. Vide Winthrop, p. i, 
note. 



l6 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

and Pym and Vane and Cromwell revolutionized 
England in never-to-be-forgotten fashion. Just now, 
however, the situation was forlorn enough. The 
mother-country was parcelled out among three con- 
tending parties : The Puritans^ who were so named 
because they stickled for the simplicity of the Gos- 
pel ; the Papists, who had swayed the sceptre under 
" Bloody Mary," and were destined to grasp it 
again a generation later under James II., and in the 
mean time were sleeplessly plotting ; and the PreU 
atists, Protestants by profession, Papists in practice, 
who were encamped at court. Charles I. now sat 
on the throne. He was that oddest of anomalies, a 
treacherous moralist. Yes, Charles was the painting 
of a virtue. Outwardly, he was Cato ; inwardly, 
he was lago. His faction, wedded like himself to 
the tenets of absolutism, eagerly cried Amen to his; 
most arbitrary acts, which they often instigated. 
Liberty-loving people — men and women whose Bible 
was the Old and New Testaments and not the Prayer- 
book, who worshipped God in spirit rather than in 
form, Christians instead of Pharisees — had a sorry 
time of it. Britain, emancipated from the Pope, 
hugged the popedom. Dissent from the State re- 
ligion was heresy. The measure of a conscience 
was the length of a prelate's foot. Thus stood the 
Puritans at the date we have mentioned : popery 
preparing to spring upon them, while the fangs of 
prelacy were already buried in their throat. 

Looking about for a chance to escape, these vic- 
tims of persecution were attracted hither, where a 
colony of their fellows had been planted in 1620 — the 
famous landers on Plymouth Rock. The newcomers 
disembarked to the north of the earlier settlers, at 



•WENDELL PHILLIPS. '7 

em, a place so called " for the peace they had 

>eorge ' Phillips was a Puritan. He could 
and would not conform to Strafford, the syste- 
tizer of tyranny in the State, and to Laud, the ex- 
lent of absolute power in the Church. A gentle- 
n by birth, a graduate of the English Cambridge, 
ector at Boxted, in Essex County, happily mar- 
d and at work, he did not hesitate to tear himself 
root and branch in obedience to his conscience. 
,me-outerism being in the blood, it should not sur- 
ise us to find the quality, an occasion having arisen, 
ain asserting itself down the line of descent 
Soon after reaching America, Mr. Phillips lost his 
fe • she, like the lady Arbella Johnson, who pre- 
ded her to the grave, dying from exposure on the 
,vage and hardship on land. Delicately reared and 
customed to luxurious surroundings, they were 
rly and lovely martyrs. The widower s sorrow 
as too full for utterance, or he might have hymned 
in those lines of Dr. Watts, so tender and pathetic : 

•• I was all love and she was all delight ; 

Let riie run back to seasons past ; 
Ah, flowery days, when first shecharmed my sight . 

But roses will not always last." 
Leaving Salem, Mr. Phillips went to Watertown 
ow a part of Boston, where he became the first 
linister of the town. This pastorate he held during 
>urteen years, until his death, in 1644. at the age ot 
fty-one He was a man of solid attainments and 
igorous intellect, was associated with John Win- 

. In reference to the meaning of the word Salem. M. Cotton 
lather's " Magnalia," vol. ii., PP- 67. 68- 



l8 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

throp in the government of the Colony of xMas 
chusetts, and was the earliest advocate in Amer 
of the Congregational order and discipline.' Tl- 
he marches among the founders of empire-cofidito 
imperioriun, to whom Lord Bacon, in his " Marsh 
ling of theSovereign Degrees of Honor," assigns t 
foremost place. 

Such was Phillips the first. His eldest son, Ph 
lips the second,' was born in England in 162 
crossed the sea with his parents when five years ol 
was among the earliest graduates of Harvard C 
lege, then recently founded ; ' entered the ministr- 
settled at Rowley, in Massachusetts, in 165 1, whe 
he remained until his death, in 1696, making hims 
known and felt as the Rev. Samuel Phillips, 
twelvemonth after leaving college, he married Sar; 
Appleton, of Ipswich, and this couple left a laq 
family. The second Phillips was a man of estimab 
character and brilliant ability— the favorite orat 
on anniversary occasions.' This characteristic, to 
reappeared, later on, with added vim. 

Phillips the third was named Samuel, after h 
father. He broke the clerical continuity and toe 
to business, removing to Salem, where he becan 
a goldsmith. Born in 1657, he married a gran 
daughter of Deputj'-GovernorSymonds, Mary Eme- 
son, of Gloucester, Mass., and died in 1722, at tb 
age of sixty-five. He was a man of unblemishe 
reputation, had a genius for trade, and made monej 



' " Phillips Genealogies," by Albert M. Phillips, p. 10. 
"^ The Rev. George Phillips married a second time, and left sev? 
children by this marriage. 
3 Opened in 1638. "^ Gage's " Plistory of Rowley.* 



I 



WENDELl. PHILLIPS. I9 

He also begat children/ two of whom it behooves 
us attentively to notice. The eldest son, named 
Samuel after his father, jumped back into the min- 
istry. The four chief events in his life were : his 
birth, in 1689 ; his graduation from Harvard College, 
in 1708 ; his settlement as pastor of the " Old South 
Church" in Andover, jn 1710, and his marriage, in 
171 1, to Hannah White, of Haverhill, Mass., whose 
father was a deacon and a captain in the militia. This 
Phillips, of the fourth generation, continued to 
preach in Andover until his death, in 1771 ; was a 
model of industry and self-restraint, and a born 
leader in thought and action."^ 

He left five children, two of whom became widely 
useful and distinguished, viz., Samuel and John 
Phillips. These brothers were laymen, and settled 
the one in Andover, Mass., the other in Exeter, 
N. H. Both accumulated wealth, and they became 
the joint founders of the celebrated Phillips Acad- 
emy, in Andover — an institution whose usefulness in- 
creases with the lapse of time. In addition to this 
good work, John founded the Phillips Academy, in 
Exeter, the twin of Andover, and also endowed a 
chair of theology at Dartmouth College. Living in 
the "times that tried men's souls," these brothers 
were patriots and saints — among the most eminent 
ot all.^ The son of the eldest, known as Judge Phil- 
lips, inherited the best qualities of both ; became 
lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts, and continued 



' Samuel Phillips, like his grandfather, was twice married. All his 
children were by his first wife, save the last. 

^ " Memoir of Judge Phillips," by Rev. John L. Taylor, p. 7. 
^ Vide ** Phillips Genealogies," pp. 1^-20, passim. 



20 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

their benefactions to the cause of ^earning, lavishing 
time, attention, money upon the Andover Academy, 
especially, whose constitution and course of study 
are the output of his brain.' 

Having said so much regarding the elder of this 
fourth generation, and his immediate descendants, 
beguiled into it b}' their usefulness and eminence, 
we return now to the second son of Samuel Phillips, 
the goldsmith, whose name was John — the great- 
grandfather of the subject of these pages. John 
Phillips was born in 1701. He became a Boston 
merchant ; married, in 1723, Mary, a daughter of 
Nicholas Buttolph, also of Boston ; possessed marked 
mercantile ability, as his success shows ; was a dea- 
con in the old Brattle-street church, a justice of the 
peace, colonel of the Boston regiment, and many 
times represented the town in the General Court. 
He died in 1768, " and was buried with military 
honors." ' This was the fourth Phillips in the direct 
line to Wendell. Phillips the fifth was William, 
only son of John and Mary Buttolph, who was born 
in 1737, and who married Margaret, youngest child 
of the Hon. Jacob Wendell,^ a distinguished mer- 
chant of Boston, a military magnate, and one of the 
Governor's Council. William Phillips died early 



^ Vide " Phillips Genealogies," pp. 20-24. Judge Phillips gave 
many thousands of dollars in this way. Bearing in mind the difference 
in the purchasing power of money then and now, his gifts would be 
equivalent to hundreds of thousands of dollars to-day. See an inter- 
esting and valuable article on Andover in Harper s Magazine, vol. Iv., 
p. 564. 

■^ Ib.y p. 29. 

^ The Wendells were of Dutch extraction, and came to Boston from 
Albany. N. Y., in the early years of the eighteenth century. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 21 

— at thirty-four. His widow survived him many 
years.* It was from her that our Wendell received 
his name. 

Their only son became famous as the Hon. John 
Phillips — sixth in the line from the American ances- 
tor. He was born in 1770. Two years later his 
father died. His mother proved equal to the emer- 
gency. She was a woman of unusual strength of 
character, well educated, and a devoted Christian. 
On account of the advantages he would there enjoy, 
she sent her boy to abide under the roof-tree of his 
uncle, Lieutenant-Governor Phillips, at Andover, 
where he fitted for college at the academy of which 
his kinsman was such a generous patron. Entering 
Harvard when he was fourteen, he was graduated 
in 1788, and pronounced the salutatory oration. He 
was called to the bar shortly afterward, and leaped 
into an extensive and lucrative practice. In 1794 he 
was selected to deliver the oration on the Fourth of 
July, with Boston for an audience — a production 
familiar ever since through an extract in the school- 
books, where it rests as a model of eloquence, and 
which several generations of boys have declaimed. 
The finger-tips of the writer tingle as they hold the 
pen in memory of one such occasion. 

While the echoes of that speech yet resounded in 
the old town, Mr. Phillips married Sally Walley, 
whose father was a successful merchant there. This 
lady became one of the best of wives, one of the 
most devoted of mothers. Patient, watchful, con- 
siderate, self-sacrificing, she was a power for good 
in all the relations of home and neighborhood. She 



* She died February 27th, 1823, 



22 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

possessed line natural powers of mind and heart, 

which she had been able carefully to cultivate. Thus 

she stood, 

" A perfect woman, nobly planned, 

To warn, to comfort, and command." 

Aided by his own powers, admirably seconded by 
his wife's co-operation, John Phillips passed rapidly 
on and up from high to higher. In 1800, on the 
establishment of the Municipal Court in Boston, he 
was made public prosecutor, a function which, in a 
less official but far wider sense, his celebrated son 
inherited. In 1803 he was elected to the House of 
Representatives. In 1804 he was returned to the 
Senate of Massachusetts, where he remained until 
his death. In 1809 he became judge of the Court of 
Common Pleas. In 18 12 he was chosen a member 
of the corporation of Harvard College. In 1820 he 
sat in the Convention for the Revision of the Con- 
stitution of the State — perhaps the most conspicuous 
figure in that able and dignified body. In 1821 Bos- 
ton adopted a city charter. Two candidates, equally 
eminent, were named for the mayoralty — Harrison 
Gray Otis, a nephew of that James Otis whose elo- 
quence had defied George III., and consecrated Fa- 
neuil Hall and the " Old South " Church to hberty, 
himself one of the most accomplished orators of that 
generation ; and Josiah Quinc}^ already decorated 
with honors. State and national, to which he further 
added, in after years, the titles of Speaker of the 
Massachusetts House of Representatives, Judge of 
the Municipal Court, and President of Harvard Col- 
lege. Between two such worthy competitors selec- 
tion was difficult. A vote resulted in no choice, 
whereupon the Hon. John Phillips was pitched upon 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 23 

as a compromise candidate, and was immediately 
elected — practically without opposition. He thus 
became the first Mayor of Boston. His incumbency 
was so satisfactory that there was a universal de- 
mand for his re-election. But before the close of 
his term he was suddenly removed from earth by 
angina pectoris, an insidious disease destined more 
than half a century later to end the mortal career of 
his great son. 

John Phillips was universally respected. His 
mind was clear and wide, his heart was warm, his 
hands were open and clean, his soul was anchored 
in deep piety. Filling as he did a great variety of 
offices, no one ever questioned either his integrity 
or his ability. He was specially gifted in speech, 
and this power was enhanced by a singular charm 
of manner. In this he was evidently the father of 
his son. But he is also credited by tradition with 
"a pliable disposition," which, just as plainly, he 
did not transmit to one of his children. 

Early in the century, Mr. Phillips built for himself 
a spacious mansion of the colonial pattern, at the 
corner of Beacon and Walnut streets, which became 
a show place (the old engravings of Boston loved to 
reproduce it), and which the curious may still gaze 
at, though it has been somewhat altered. It was the 
navel of the aristocratic quarter, and stood in the 
"West End" of the New England London; the 
" Saint Germain " of the Yankee Paris. A block 
away, to the left, on the summit of Beacon Hill, was 
the Hancock house — as bold and unmistakable in 
the landscape as its owner's signature was in the 
Declaration of Independence. Next door, on the 
right, lived the Winthrops — the town residence of 



24 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

that historic family. In front stretched the forty- 
three acres of Boston Common. Around and about 
thronged the dons and doilas of the capital. Here, 
on November 29th, 18 11, Wendell was born — the 
eighth in a family of nine ; a nest of brothers, with 
three sisters in it.' 



^ The complete list of the children of John and Sally (Walley) 
Phillips, with dates of birth and death, is as follows : 

1. Thomas Walley, born January i6th, 1797 ; died 1859. 

2. Sarah Hurd, born April 24th, 1799 ; died 1837. 

3. Samuel, born 1801 ; died 1S17, while a member of the Sopho- 
more Class of Harvard College. 

4. Margaret, born November 29th, 1802 ; died 

5. Miriam, born ; died 

6. John Charles, born November 15th, 1807 ; died 1878. 

7. George William, born January 3d, 1810 ; died 1880. 

8. Wendell, born November 29th, 181 1 ; died February 2d, 1884. 

9. Grenville Tudor, born August 14th, 1816 ; died 1863. 
Vide " Phillips Genealogies," pp. 30-35. 



II. 

ENVIRONMENT. 

Every thoughtful observer of life knows that the 
fireside is the earliest and most influential of schools. 
The nursery is the child's university. When the 
nature is uninscribed and plastic the home writes 
the first and most lasting impressions. More that is 
elementary — a key to all the rest — is learned in the 
cradle and beside the mother's chair than in all after 
time. Here dawns upon the mind the conception of 
life. Here ideals are imparted. Parents decree the 
future. Happy the boy or girl whose heart throbs 
with the memory of a good and happy home ! 
Hence in studying any human eminence the instant 
and critical inquiry touches this decisive point. 

It was a kindly turning of Providence in Wendell 
Phillips's favor that he was born when and where he 
was. His high-chair was placed in a Puritan house- 
hold. This means much. It indicates lofty thought. 
It stands for holy living. It implies a domestic 
economy regulated by gravity and decorum and vir- 
tue above the frivolities of the hour. It signifies that 
definite ideas of right and wrong were implanted. It 
shows that, in conformity with Milton's suggestion, 

" To measure life learn thou betimes," 

the boy's nascent intelligence was seasonably in- 
structed in the chief articles of human being and 
doing. 



2(i WENDKLL PHILLIPS. 

Then, too, that old colonial mansion was warm 
with plenty. John Phillips, being wealthy, vvas a 
liberal provider. Mrs. John was a model New Eng- 
land housewife. Consequently, their children, one 
after the other, opened their eyes upon delightful 
surroundings, x^bundance laughed in the larder. 
Books elbowed one another on the shelves of the 
library. Pictures smiled down from the walls. Stat- 
uary breathed from the corners of the rooms. Thus 
an insensible education of the 6)^6 and ear was ever 
proceeding. That subtle element which w^e call 
.-esthetic, at once delicate and formative, impregnated 
the air. Could any atmosphere be more helpful to 
one who should by and by become an orator ? 

It was further happy for young Wendell that he 
was one of many children. An only child is apt to 
be petted and spoiled. Where there are a number, 
each demands so much that no one can get all. Be- 
sides, it should seem to be a psychological fact that 
the friction of several minds from the nursery up to 
adult life is necessary to the best development of 
genius. There is scarcely an instance of an only 
child's achieving greatness. Even when latent, 
ability gasps and dies for lack of elbow-room and 
play. On the other hand, history is full of char- 
acters that were helped out and thrust forward by 
early attrition at home. Thus Napoleon w^as one of 
thirteen children ; Franklin was one of seventeen ; 
General Sherman w^as one of eleven ; Charles Dickens 
was one of eight ; Gladstone was one of seven. 
Those large American families which were universal 
a generation or two back — were they not so many 
schools of genius? Their infrequency to-day — is 
this not suggestive, ominous? What possibilities 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 27 

our fashionable mothers nowadays forego ; the pos- 
sibilities of fostering genius and winning for them- 
selves personal distinction ! 

John Phillips made this wise rule for his children : 
" Never ask another to do for you what you can do 
for yourself ; and never ask another to do for you 
what you would not do for yourself if you could." 
There is no end of self-reliance in this rule, and a 
world of sound democratic philosophy, besides. 
Knowing, also, the uncertainty of fortune in America 
— a game of blindman's-buff — and remembering, 
perhaps, the old Jewish saying, " He who does not 
teach his children a trade, brings them up to steal," 
he encouraged them to master whatever tools of 
manual labor they could handle. Accordingl}^, as 
soon as he got on his feet, Wendell began to potter 
about the house with hammer and chisel and saw. 
In later life he claimed that there was hardly an or- 
dinary trade in vogue when he was a boy at which 
he had not done man}^ a daj-'s work.' Indeed, his 
mother said : " A good carpenter was spoiled when 
Wendell became a lawyer." 

Moreover, he early developed another trait, more 
significant of his future career. Feeling the push 
of his clerical ancestry, he became a preacher at four 
or five, and placing a Bible in a chair before him, and 
arranging other chairs in circles about the room, he 
would harangue these wooden auditors (hardly more 
wooden than some of the human ones he afterward 
addressed) by the hour.' 



' Thomas Wentworth Higginson's " Wendell Phillips," published 
by Lee & Shepard, Boston, 1884. 
' Testimony of Theodore D. Weld. 



28 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

" Wendell," said his father to him, one day, 
*' don't you get tired of this ?" 

"No, papa," replied the speaker, "/don't get 
tired, but it's rather hard on the chairs !" 

He inherited his wit from his father, who was very 
bright. When a member of the Convention for the 
Revision of the Constitution of Massachusetts, John 
Phillips, in debating a certain proposed change, re- 
marked : " I hope our case may not be like that of a 
man whose epitaph may be read in an Italian church- 
yard : ' I was well ; I wanted to be better ; I took 
medicine ; and here I lie ! ' " * 

Wendell was of a domestic turn, sympathetic and 
affectionate, and open as the daylight. His love for 
his mother was a passion. He was also devoted to 
his nurse, Polly. When the birthday of this good 
soul came round, he gave her a needle-case, bought 
with his own pennies, and with it a verse which he 
composed, and (with a single later exception to be 
cited in due time) his first and only poetic flight. 

The boy's nearest and dearest intimate, residing a 
block away, at the corner of Walnut and Chestnut 
streets, was J. Lothrop Motley, destined to become 
famous as the historian of the Netherlands. It was 
David and Jonathan with these two ; and their friend- 
ship, beginning in the cradle, lasted to the grave. 
Phillips was the elder by two years ; but Motley was 
{precocious — a scholar in his childhood. Referring 
to this period, the orator says : " Motley could not 
have been eleven years old when he began writing 
a novel. It opened, I remember, not with * one soli- 
tary horseman,' but with two, riding up to an inn. 



* Found in the records of the Convention. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 29 

in the Valley ol the Housatonic. Neither of us had 
ever seen the Housatonic, but it sounded grand and 
romantic. Two chapters were finished." ^ 

Thomas Gold Appleton, the son of one of the 
patriarchs of New England manufactures, who had 
amassed a great fortune, also Hved near by, and 
made this duo a trio. Appleton became a noted wit 
cind raconteur, and joined to these gifts the charm of 
a graceful pen. As Phillips speaks of Motley, so 
Appleton tells of both : " PhiUips was an old friend 
of mine. I remember how we used to play together 
long ago, and the recollection is very pleasant in- 
deed. He was a fine, manly little fellow, and 1 was 
very proud of him as a playmate. Wendell Phillips, 
J. Lothrop Motley, and I frolicked in the garret of 
the Motley house ; and I recall that their favorite 
pastime used to be to strut about in any fancy cos- 
tume they could find in the corners of the old attic, 
and shout scraps of poetry and snatches of dialogue 
at each other. It was a fine sight to watch them, 
for both were noble-looking fellows ; and even then 
Wendell's voice was a very pleasant one to listen to, 
and his gestures as graceful as could be." ^ 

Mr. Appleton's account is corroborated by Oliver 
Wendell Holmes (a kinsman of Wendell Phillips) in 
his admirable " Memoir of Motley" : " If one could 
have looked into that garret when our country was 
not far advanced in its second score of years, he 
might have found these three boys in cloaks and 
doublets and plumed hats, as heroes and bandits, 
enacting more or less impromptu melodramas." ' 

* " Memoir of Motley," by Oliver Wendell Holmes, p. 7. 

2 Vide Boston Globe, Phillips Memorial Edition, February 4th, 1884 

' " Memoir of Motley," p. 5. 



30 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Wendell was his mother's favorite.' Possessed 
herself of a strong character, marked by singular 
simplicity and keen insight, she early discerned the 
dormant powers of her gifted son, and never spared 
herself in the endeavor to put the best that was in 
her into him. She was profoundly religious. Her 
foremost purpose, therefore, was to root him in faith 
and hope and love. She used to take him aside and 
pray with and for him. Her earliest gift to him was 
a Bible — his inseparable companion for seventy 
years.' She taught him the catechism as he sat on 
her lap. And when he could hardly toddle she 
guided his steps, his hand in hers, to the family 
pew on Sunday mornings. " Wendell," she would 
say, " be good and do good ; this is my whole de- 
sire for you. Add other things if you may — these 
are central." ' Under such wholesome tuition how 
could the lad's moral nature do otherwise than 
healthily develop ? 

Physically, he was strong and well. Mrs. Phillips 
was almost as solicitous for his bodily as for his 
moral welfare. She taught him the laws of life and 
health — the gospel of hygiene — jfiejis sana in corpore 
sano. Those habits of temperance, exercise, and 
purity which characterized him from first to last in 
a remarkable degree, were the fruitage of her in- 



' His own testimony. See also the " Eulogy of Wendell Phillips," 
by T. D. Weld, p. 19. 

' This he gave just before his death to his intimate friend, Mrs. 
E.-S. Crosby, who treasures it among her jcivels. In it he marked 
two passages, which he requested should be read at his funeral, viz., 
Ps. 23 and I Cor. 15 : 12. These were so read. 

^ Mr. Phillips repeated these words to the writer in 1868, and ten 
years afterward, when his attention was called to the matter, corrob- 
orated the utterance. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 3 1 

structions. A wise mother wisely at work fashioning 
the soul within, and the form, its shrine, n^ithout — 
what usefulness quite equals this ? 

Both parents were widely and variously interested 
in affairs beyond their door-steps. John PhiUips, as 
we have noted, was in public life. His wife was a 
true helpmeet. His concerns were hers. Hence 
questions and issues astir out there in the streets 
were brought into the household, and talked over 
at the fireside and around the table. Persons were 
characterized, measures were discussed, matters of 
historical moment were dwelt upon, in full family 
conclave. In this way the children gained an intel- 
ligent acquaintance with the outside world. The 
hearthstone was a vantage-ground from which to 
survey, in seclusion, but not in exclusion, the multi- 
form life of the commonwealth. At such times, we 
may be sure, no eyes and ears were wider open than 
Wendell's ; and so he learned from the start that his 
neighborhood extended farther than just around the 
corner. 

In those days the Revolutionary tradition was 
fresh and vigorous. This has been happily called 
the native air of Wendell Phillips.' It marked and 
dominated his life. Several of the chief actors in the 
drama were yet on the stage — Jefferson at Monti- 
cello ; John Adams just at hand, in Quincy ; while 
Elbridge Gerry sat in the Governor's chair of Mas- 
sachusetts at the very moment of his birth. All 
about were the lofty and inspiring scenes immortal- 
ized by these and kindred heroes. Yonder, in sight 
from his door-sill, loomed Bunker Hill. Here was 



» George William Curtis' s " Eulogy of Wendell Phillips," p. 5. 



32 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

the church-tower whose lantern started Paul Revere 
upon his ride. There was Winter Hill, whose can- 
non-ball struck old Brattle Street church. Across 
the Common was the " Old South," dedicated to 
God by the Puritans, and to liberty by Otis and 
Warren. Within five minutes' walk was Faneuil 
Hall, twice the cradle of freedom : the freedom of 
the Colonies and the freedom of the negro race in 
America ; the birthplace and waiting theatre of this 
boy's own renown. And behold ! the very elm 
under whose branches Washington first drew his 
sword. What an environment ! What an incen- 
tive ! 

Moving daily among these historic associations, 
the boy, at once perceptive and receptive, learned 
to reverence the " dead but sceptred sovereigns who 
still rule our spirits from their urns." Having him- 
self thrilled beneath their touch, he came to value 
them as " the normal school of politics." He voiced 
the influence of his environment, long years after- 
ward, in speaking of revolutionary Boston : 

" We had a signal prominence in those days. It was not our 
merit ; it was an accident, perhaps. But it was a great acci- 
dent in our favor that the British Parliament chose Boston as the 
first and prominent object of its wrath. It was on the men of 
Boston that Lord North visited his revenge. It was our port 
that was to be shut, and its commerce annihilated. It was Sam 
Adams and John Hancock who enjoy the everlasting reward of 
being the only names excepted from the royal proclamation of 
forgiveness. 

*' It was only an accident ; but it was an accident which, in 
the stirring history of the most momentous change the world 
has seen, placed Boston in the van. Naturally, therefore, in our 
streets and neighborhood came the earliest collision between 
England and the Colonies. Here Sam Adams, the ablest and 
ripest statesman God gave to the epoch, forecast those measures 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 33 

which welded thirteen colonies into one thunderbolt, and 
launched it at George III. Here Otis magnetized every 
boy into a desperate rebel. Here the fit successors of Hugh 
Peters and Knox consecrated their pulpits to the defence of that 
doctrine of the freedom and sacredness of man, which the State 
borrowed so directly from the Christian Church. The towers 
of the North Church rallied the farmers to the Lexington and 
Concord fights ; and these old walls (the 'Old South' Church) 
echoed the people's shout when Adams brought them word that 
Governor Hutchinson surrendered and withdrew the redcoats. 
Lingering here still are the echoes of those clashing sabres and 
jingling spurs that dreamed Warren could be awed to silence. 
Otis's blood immortalizes State Street, just below where Attucks 
fell (our first martyr), and just above where zealous patriots 
made a teapot of the harbor. 

' It was a petty town of some twenty thousand inhabitants ; 
t>ut * the rays of royal indignation collected upon it served only 
to illuminate and not to consume.' Almost every one of its 
houses had a legend. Every public building hid what was 
treasonable debate, or bore bullet-marks or bloodshed — evidence 
of royal displeasure. It takes a stout heart to step out of a 
crowd and risk the chances of support, when failure is death. 
The strongest, proudest, most obstinate race and kingdom on 
one side : a petty town the assailant ; its weapons, ideas ; its 
trust, God and the right ; its old-fashioned men patiently arguing 
with cannon and regiments ; blood the seal of the debate, and 
every stone, and wall, and roof, and doorway witness forever of 
the angry tyrant and sturdy victim. 

" Boston boys had reason to be thankful for their birthright. 
The great memories, noble deeds, and sacred places of the old 
town are the poetry of history and the keenest ripeners of char- 
acter. " ' 

Such, then, was the home, such the instructions, 
and such the scenes in Avhich were passed the earli- 
est and most impressionable years of Wendell Phil- 
lips. 



' Oration at the Old South Meeting House, for its preservation. 
June 14th, 1876. 



111. 

SCHOOLING. 

To the formative influences of the home and the 
streets, Wendell Phillips superadded the best educa- 
tional advantages. He was sent in his eleventh year 
to the Boston Public Latin School — prolific mother 
of famous sons. This landmark of ancient Boston 
then stood on School Street, between Washington 
and Tremont, upon a portion of the ground now 
covered by the Parker House. Mr. B. A. Gould, 
an ideal pedagogue, was then and long remained 
the head-master. The school was largely attended, 
and the scholars represented the blue blood and brains 
of young America in 1822. Motley went to North- 
ampton to fit for college, an institution officered, 
in part, by the historian Bancroft ;' so that he and 
Phillips did not continue their camaraderie during the 
five years from 1822 to 1827 — resuming it at Har- 
vard. But Appleton remained as the chum of Phil- 
lips. And now he met and cemented his lifelong 
friendship with Charles Sumner, who was his elder 
by nearly a year, and who was in the class a twelve- 
month ahead. Sumner, as Phillips himself testifies, 
came from a family " long prominent in Massachu- 
setts," a family " noted for physical as well as intel- 



' See Holmes's "Memoir;" also the " Correspondence of J. Lo- 
throp Motley," edited by George William Curtis, published by 
Harper & Brothers, New York, 1889. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 35 

lectual vigor." ^ The senator that was to be em- 
bodied even now the physical and intellectual traits 
of his ancestry ; but at the Latin School " he was 
a recluse and studious boy, hardly ever joining- in 
any amusements or athletic games ; and this mood 
lasted through his college years." ^ 

Indeed, Boston then discountenanced athletics. 
Schools and colleges existed for the cultivation oi 
brain, not brawn. Now they exist for the culti- 
vation of brawn, not brain. Probably, the truth lies 
in that golden mean which the classics recom- 
mend. Anyhow, Phillips was ahead of his times 
in this respect ; as, later, he was in other ways. 
For though never negligent of his books, he dearly 
loved athletics. He was a champion boxer and 
marksman, and fencer and oarsman, and horseman. 
Inheriting a magnificent physique, palpitating with 
health, he trampled prejudices under foot and would 
have exercise, and plenty of it.^ His standing as 
a scholar was excellent, * as a result, no doubt, of 
ihose despised gymnastics. The curriculum ^ neces- 



' Johnson's AVz^ Universal Cyclopcedia, article *' Sumner," by W. 
Phillips. 

* lb. * Such is the united testimony of his classmates. * lb. 

* Here it is as it then stood : In Greek, Valpy's " Grammar," 
the " Delectus Sententiarum Graecarum ;" Jacobs's " Greek Reader ;" 
the " Four Gospels" and two books of Homer's " Iliad ;" in Latin, 
Adams's '* Latin Grammar," " Liber Primus," " Epiteme Historise 
Graec<E," " Vivi Rom«," " Phsedri Fabulae," " Cornelius Nepos ;" 
Ovid's "Metamorphoses;" Sallust's "Catiline" and " Jugurthine 
War ;'" Caesar ; Virgil ; Cicero's " Select Orations ;" the " Agricola" 
and " Germania" of Tacitus, and the "Odes" and " Epodes" of 
Horace : in the study of mythology, Tooke's " Pantheon of the 
Heathen Gods" served as a text-book ; in arithmetic, Lacroix was 
the text-book ; in reading, Lindley Murray's " English Reader." The 
school was so large that each c/ass was subdivided into three divisions. 



36 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

sitated diligence ; and there was head-master Gould, 
ferule in hand, to enforce attention and knock learn- 
ing into unwilling heads. 

Wendell continued in School Street those habits 
of declamation begun among the chairs at home and 
practised in Motley's garret ; but now with a larger 
audience. " What first led me to observe him," 
writes a fellow-student, " and fixed him in my mem- 
ory, was his elocution ; and I soon came to look for- 
ward to declamation day with interest, mainly on his 
account, though many were admirable speakers. 
The pieces chosen were chiefly such as would excite 
patriotic feelings and an enthusiasm for freedom." ' 
Phillips himself tells us that already he "had by 
heart the classic eulogies of brave old men and 
martyrs," and carried at the end of his silver tongue 
** Greek and Roman and English history." " Then 
and afterward he embraced every opportunity to 
hear the " masters of assemblies :" his own father, 
Harrison Gray Otis, Edward Everett — every great- 
ness of the day. 

In 1825 an event occurred which convulsed the 
continent with enthusiasm — the visit of Lafayette. 
When the illustrious friend of Washington landed in 
Boston the city was in a frenzy. Phillips shall tell 
us about his share in the scene in his own words, 
quoted from a charming address which he made in 
the afternoon of his career to a vast audience in the 
Music Hall, at the annual School Festival of Boston : ' 

" This is tlie first time for many years that I have participated 
in a school festival. I have received no invitation since 1824, 



' ** Life and Times of Wendell Phillips," by George L. Austin, p. 29. 

* *' Speeches and Lectures," by Wendell Phillips, p. 226. 

* July 25th, 1865. Vide p.344of this volume. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 37 

when I was a little boy in a class in the Latin School, when we 
were turned out on yonder Common m a grand procession at 
nine o'clock in the morning. And for what .'* Not to hear fine 
music — no ; but for something better than music, that thrilled 
more than eloquence — a sight which should live in the memory 
forever, the best sight which Boston ever saw— the welcome of 
Lafayette on his return to this country, after an absence of a 
score of years. I can boast, boys and girls, more than you. I 
£an boast that these eyes have beheld the hero of three revolu- 
tions, this hand has touched the right hand that held up Han- 
cock and Washington, Not all this glorious celebration can 
equal that glad reception of the nation's benefactor by all that 
Boston could offer him — a sight of her children. It was a long 
procession ; and, unlike other processions, we started punctually 
at the hour published. They would not let us wander about, 
and did not wish us to sit down. I there received my first lesson 
in hero-worship. I was so tired after four hours* waiting, I 
could scarcely stand ; but when I saw him — that glorious old 
Frenchman ! — I could have stood until to-day." 

Amid such scenes and experiences five tranquil 
years of preparation were passed. The boy of ten 
was now the youth of fifteen — tall, lithe, and grace- 
ful as a Greek statue. Leaving- the Latin School with 
an established reputation for every accomplishment 
of body and mind that suited his age, and for some 
more mature, he stepped up into the broader world 
of Harvard. This was in 1827. 

Although his home was just in sight across the 
river Charles, it was not as easy then to get to and 
from Boston and Cambridge as it is now. Besides, 
it was thought best to give Wendell the benefit of a 
college entourage. His father was dead — had died 
the year after the lad was entered at the Latin 
School, in 1823. Thus the entire responsibility for 
the education and outfit in life of a large family de- 
volved upon the mother. The sagacious manner in 



38 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

which she met and mastered the emergency contrib- 
uted, no doubt, to give her son that respect for and 
appreciation of female ability which became one of 
his characteristic traits. But we must pity these 
two, separated now for the first time, though rot for 
long. She wept on his neck, commended him to 
God, and cautioned him about his linen in the same 
breath, and told him never to forget his prayers and 
his Bible — and regularly to air his room ! True 
mother and true saint ; an enchanting and common 
combination ; embodying the divine and human, and 
therefore not strangely mixing earth and heaven in 
speech and action. 

When Phillips matriculated the Rev. Dr. John T. 
Kirkland was president. Two years later, in 1829, 
Josiah Ouincy succeeded him, the same Quincy who 
had divided the suffrages of Boston with Harrison 
Gray Otis, when Wendell's father was elected 
mayor ; a man both good and great, whose life God 
spared to a serene and honored evening of old age. 
The faculty and the students — all are gone ! To read 
their names in the catalogue of 1827 is like spelling 
the names on the weather-stained head-stones in a 
graveyard. Harvard is old enough to be mellowed 
by time. A certain pensiveness hangs around it 
and mates it with European universities dating back 
to the Middle Ages. True, youth is on the campus, 
and the dormitories and the class-rooms are popu- 
lous with animation and color. Just the same, yes- 
terday shadows to-day. The old clock which has 
tolled away so many generations will toll away this 
generation.^ The grave only waits ! An historic 

* See this thought developed by Professor Goldwin Smith, ** Lec- 
tures on the Study of History," p 220. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 39 

college is an isthmus separating two eternities, yet, 
like Suez, canalled to marry the oceans ; and it is 
this relation which it sustains to the past and the 
future which endows it with such influence over the 
imagination of dreamy and poetic youth. 

Phillips became intimate with President Quincy — 
as intimate as was possible considering their differ- 
ence in age and station. With the president's son, 
Edmund Quincv, he formed at this time an associa- 
tion which ran through both lives as veins run 
through a block of marble. 

Young Quincy was several years older than Phil- 
lips ; but they got together and stayed together. 
Sumner w^as a Sophomore when Phillips entered the 
Freshman Class ; but in this case friendship over- 
leaped the boundary of class, as in the case of Quincy 
it had of age. Now, too, Motley came to Harvard, 
and those Beacon-Hill relations were cemented 
anew. Speaking of Motley, Phillips gives interest- 
ing testimony — lets us behind the scenes : 

'* His quickness of apprehension was wonderful. During our 
first year at college, though the youngest in the class, he stood 
third, I think, or second in rank ; and ours was an especially 
able class. Yet to maintain this standing he neither cared nor 
needed to make any effort. Too young to feel any responsibil- 
ities, and not yet awake to ambition, he became so negligent 
that he was ' rusticated.' He came back sobered and worked 
rather more ; but with no effort for college rank thenceforward. 
In his room he had a small writing-table with a shallow drawer ; 
I have often seen it half-full of sketches, unfinished poems, solilo- 
quies, a scene or two of a play, prose portraits of pet characters, 
etc. These he would read to me, though he never volunteered 
to do so ; and every now and then he burned the whole, and 
began to fill the drawer again."* 



* ** Memoir of J. Lothrop Motley," by Oliver Wendell Fiolmes, p. 8. 



40 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

It is further recorded of Motley, that one day his 
tutor came into his room and found the table littered 
up with novels instead of text-books. 

" How is this?" asked the tutor. 

" Well," was the answer, ** you see, I am pursuing 
a course of historical reading-. I have now reached 
the novels of the nineteenth century. Take them in 
bulk, they are tough reading !" ' 

Phillips had from the start and always retained an 
intense sense of the ludicrous. These and such like 
experiences of his crony he appreciated then and 
told years later with inimitable effect. Of himself, 
however, no such stories can be related. Though 
never a hermit like Sumner, neither was he a scape- 
grace like Motley. Between the two in age he was 
enough like both to win their confidence and com- 
mand their respect. In college rank he stood well 
up toward the head.* But his interests were too 
broad and diversified for the v^aledictorian's crown. 
At Harvard, as in the Latin School, he gave a good 
deal of attention to athletics, and continued his box- 
ing, fencing, boating, and horse-riding, becoming an 
expert in these manly accomplishments.^ He was 
also an omnivorous reader, history and mechanics 
being his specialties." His passion was horses ; in 
later life he made a personal friend of Rarey, the 
horse-tamer. 

When Phillips went to Cambridge the Rev. Dr. 
Lyman Beecher was the Jupiter of the Boston pul- 
pit. Every Sunday, and often on week-day nights, 

' " Memoir of J. Lothrop Motley," by Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
p. 9. 

* The Rev. Edgar Buckingham, class-secretary of the Class of 1S31. 
^ lb. 4 lb. 



k 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 4I 

he thundered and lightened in Hanover Street 
church. He shook and kindled the town. Thou- 
sands throbbed under his preaching. His special 
mission was to combat Unitarianism, which then sat 
in all the high places. One day some one said to 
him : 

** Well, Dr. Beecher, how long do you think 
it will take you to destroy Unitarianism in Bos- 
ton ?" 

" Humph !" was the gruff reply, " several years, 
I suppose — roots and all." 

Among the many attracted to hear his discourses 
was young Phillips, whose immediate family was 
orthodox in creed. As a child he had learned his 
first lessons in theology with his mother's lap for an 
altar. Now those childish impressions were deep- 
ened and confirmed bv Dr. Beecher, never afterward 
to change. He passed through the experience called 
conversion. 

A personal friend asked him, not long before his 
death : " Mr. Phillips, did you ever consecrate j^our- 
self toGod?" 

" Yes," he answ^ered, " when I was a boy fourteen 
years of age, in the old church at the North End, 
I heard Lyman Beecher preach on the theme, ' You 
belong to God ;' and I went home after that service, 
threw myself on the floor in my room, with locked 
doors, and prayed, ' O God, I belong to Thee ; 
take what is Thine own. I ask this, that whenever 
a thing be wrong it may have no power of tempta- 
tion over me ; whenever a thing be right, it may 
take no courage to do it.' From that day to this it 
has been so. Whenever I have known a thing to 
be wrong, it has held no temptation. Whenever I 



42 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

have known a thing to be right, it has taken no cour- 
age to do it." ' 

The event here referred to occurred in 1826, a 
year previous to his matriculation. With this seri- 
ousness upon him, Hke the halo around a saint's head 
on the canvas of the old painters, he went to col- 
lege. 

Now let us stop and look at his portrait, as drawn 
by several of his classmates. 

Referring to his religious experience, the Rev. 
Dr. Edgar Buckingham remarks : 

" The excitement of the revival gradually passed 
off — that is, in a few years. But his conversion for 
quite a while made a deep impression on his com- 
panions, awakening their reverence (the word is not 
too strong) for this religious boy. I remember well 
his appearance of devoutness during morning and 
evening prayers in the chapel, which many attended 
only to save their credit with the authorities. Dodd- 
ridge's 'Expositor' Wendell bore to college in his 
Freshman year (a present, I think, from his mother, 
a new volume), to be his help in daily thought 
and prayer." ' 

Another of his classmates refers to the same ex- 
})erience : 

" Before entering college he had been the subject 
of religious revival. Previous to that he used to 
give way to violent outbursts of temper, and his 
schoolmates would sometimes amuse themselves by 
deliberately Avorking him into a passion. But after 

' Evidence of Rev. O. P. Giflford, D.D., at Eighth Annual Conren- 
tion of the United Societies of Christian Endeavor. Reported in the 
Golden Rule, August 15th. 1889, p. 737. 

' Cited in Austin's " Life and Times of Wendell Phillips," p. 38. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 43 

his conversion they could never succeed in getting 
him out of temper." ' 

Truly, a conversion which makes a boy master of 
himself must be genuine ! But how about other 
traits of the young collegian ? 

" To my mind," writes the Rev. Dr. Bucking- 
ham, " Phillips was the most beautiful person I ever 
saw — handsome, indeed, in form and features ; but 
what I mean by his beauty was his grace of charac- 
ter — his kindly, generous manners, his brightness of 
mind, his perfect purity and whiteness of soul. His 
face was very fair, though it could not have been 
called pale ; and it had a radiance from which shone 
forth the soul that dwelt within. He was of a 
wealthy family ; and with manly beauty, with a most 
attractive face, ' a smile that was a benediction,* 
with manners of superior elegance, with conversa- 
tion filled with the charms of literature, with biog- 
raphy and history, full of refined pleasantry, with 
never a word or thought that the purest might not 
know and listen to, it was no wonder that his society 
was courted and respected by those who had wealth 
at their command, and still more by those young 
men who came from the South. It is said that he 
•"as proud ; ttiat he was a born patrician. In a good 
sense of the word, he was a bom patrician ; in the 
sense of a French expression, ' noblesse oblige,^ he felt 
the responsibility of his birth and education— his 
responsibihty to keep himself pure, upright, and 
good. I would not say that he never developed at 
any time anything of worldly pride also. I believe 



' Cited by Th€odore D. Weld, in his " Eulogy of Wendell Phil 
lips," p. 1 6. 



44 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

he did look down with scorn on that vulgarity, that 
form of professed democracy, whose virtue was to 
envy those better and purer than themselves, as well 
as loftier in position. I never knew that he scorned 
any one who was merely poor. But it happened, 
as one ot the strangest of all human phenomena, that 
this young man who, in all his public life, had been 
the defender of the down-trodden and despised, was 
the especial pet, in his Junior and Senior years, in 
college, of the aristocracy in that institution. In- 
deed, he had the credit of being their leader ; they 
put him up to it. The democracy of the class be- 
came excited to the highest degree — for reasons that 
I do not now recall, and believe I never knew (and 
I dare say there were none) — and it was determined 
to put Phillips and others of his associates down. 
I think he used some of his fine scorn at that 
time. We had then a military organization, a great 
pride of ours — the ' Harvard Washington Corps ' — 
and though our uniform was black coats and white 
pantaloons, and the officers had gold buttons on 
their coats, with the usual feathers, epaulets, and 
sashes, yet, in my mind then, no company, how- 
ever richly uniformed, made a handsomer appear- 
ance. When the time came for the election of officers 
by the class to which we belonged, a great struggle 
took place. It ended in a compromise. Phillips 
was not chosen captain. A young man from the 
South, yet not of the acknowledged aristocracy — a 
young man of herculean stature and proportions, one 
who had never taken sides in this social quarrel, and 
whom the whole college would have said was prop- 
erly the man for the place — was chosen ; and Phillips 
became one of the highest officers — lieutenant, I 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 45 

think. I never asked him what he learned about 
Southern pride and assumption in those days. But 
was it not singular that, from having* been the most 
admired companion and most ardent champion of 
Southern men in his youth, he should have become 
in after years an opponent of Southern principles, 
than whom there has been none more powerful in 
the country T' ^ 

Hear, next, what his room-mate, the Rev. John 
Tappen Pierce, of Illinois, has to say : 

" Our acquaintance began at Harvard, m 1827, 
when we first met to be examined. I was then a lad 
of fifteen, but two weeks younger than Phillips. 
Though I had never seen him before I was drawn to 
him by irresistible attraction, and I always found 
him true as magnet to steel. 1 had engaged a room- 
mate, otherwise we should have roomed together 
the first year ; but, just before entering the Sopho- 
more Class in 1828, Phillips came to my room and 
proposed our partnership, which I joyfully accepted ; 
and here began our life intimacy, a sweet and en- 
during tie. 

" I will speak first of his moral traits. He never 
said or did anything unbecoming to Christian char- 
acter. What President Kirkland said in his ' Life of 
Fisher Ames * was eminently true of Phillips : ' He 
needed not the sting of guilt to make him virtuous.* 
His character shone conspicuous. He was above 
pretence — a sincere, conscientious, devoted friend. 
He had a deep love for all that was true and honor- 
able ; always detested a mean action. His Bible 
was always open on the centre-table. His character 



' Austin's " Lift and Time* of Wendell Phillips," pp. 36, 38 sq. 



46 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

was perfectly tnmsparent ; there were no subter- 
fuges, no pretences about him. He was known by 
all to be just what he seemed. 

" Second, his social traits : He was the favorite 
of the class. If any class honor was to be conferred, 
who so likely to have it as he ? Nor would any dis- 
pute his claim. Though very modest in his self-esti- 
mate, every one willingly yielded him the palm. 
Upon the death of a valued classmate, Thompson, 
none but l-*hillips must pronounce the eulogy. 

" Third : His standard as a scholar was among 
the first in a large class. This is saying not a little, 
when we recall the names of Motley, the historian ; 
Simmons, the distinguished orator ; Ames, United 
States charge d'affaires ; McKean, a true son of 
genius ; the Rev. Dr. Morison, late editor of the 
Unitarian Revieiv ; Mavor Shurtleff and Dr. Shat- 
tuck, of Boston ; Pickering, the Boston lawyer ; 
Judge Durell, of New Orleans ; Joseph W^illiams, 
Lieutenant-Governor of Michigan and president of 
a State college there. 

" As an orator Phillips took the highest stand of 
any graduate of our day. I never knew him to fail 
in anything or hesitate in a recitation. In mathe- 
matics he was facile princeps ; natural and moral 
philosophy, history, the ancient languages — in all 
pre-eminent ; equally good in all branches." 

The Rev. Dr. Morison, to whom Mr. Pierce re- 
fers in the above extract, testifies as follows : 

" Wendell Phillips in college and Wendell Phillips 
six 3^ears after were entirely different men. In col- 
lege he was the proud leader of the aristocracy. 
From what he then was no one could possibly pre- 
dict what he afterward became, as the defender and 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 47 

personal friend of the helpless and despised. There 
was always the same grace and dignity of personal 
bearing, the same remarkable power of eloquence, 
whether in extempore debate or studied declamation. 
It was a great treat to hear him declaim as a college 
exercise. He was always studying remarkable pas- 
sages, as an exercise in composition, and to secure 
the most expressive forms of language. In this he 
did not accept the aid of teachers. His method was 
his own. 

" His classmates would have selected him as one 
born to be a power among men. No other student 
in those days could compare with him in that re- 
spect. He was already distinguished for his unsul- 
lied purity of character. But it was not easy to un- 
derstand how this aristocratic leader of a privileged 
class could cast in his lot with the most despised of 
his race. The simple and true explanation is that a 
new thought had come in as the central motive of 
his life. His attention was drawn to the great na- 
tional curse and crime of his day, and he gave him- 
self heart and soul to the cause." * 

While his rhetorical genius made him the easy 
master of the college platform, his social qualities 
pushed him into leadership in the numerous societies 
of Harvard. He was a member of the " Phi Beta 
Kappa," by virtue of his scholarship — that exclusive 
brotherhood being confined to the first sixteen in each 
class. He was president of the " Porcellian" and of 
the *• Gentleman's Club" — circles which admitted 
only \\\Q jeiuiesse dort'e ; and a member of the '' Hasty- 
Pudding Club. ' ' At this time there wa§ nothing of the 



» Vide WeW's " Eulogy," pp. 14, 15. 



48 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

radical about him — hardly a flavor of democracy. 
He seemed to be the predestined leader of American 
conservatism, the inevitable champion of class dis- 
tinctions and elegant leisure. Through these years 
he suggests the Cavalier, never the Puritan — Pha- 
raoh, not Moses. He was so far from radicalism 
that his maiden speech at college was made against 
the proposed establishment of a temperance society 
in his class, and he killed it ! 

One day Phillips went into Boston to attend a 
Whig meeting in Faneuil Hall. It was during the 
Presidential campaign of 1828, when Adams was 
running against Jackson. As the student ascended 
the stairs he heard for the first time the powerful, 
metallic voice of Daniel Webster arguing in favor of 
the tariff ; not very musical, he thought, as Clay's 
was, or Harrison Gray Otis's, but full of strength. 
As he entered the hall and listened he speedily de- 
tected that "his statement was argument.'' After 
this he frequently heard W^ebster in the courts and 
at political gatherings — always with admiration for 
his gifts. The great expounder, he found, was pon- 
derous, almost heavy on ordinary occasions. It 
took a crisis to rouse him — then he was sublime.' 

Mr. Phillips was graduated in 1831, with a class 
which numbered sixty-five members. What next?' 



' " Recollections of Wendell Phillips," by F. B. Sanborn (ms.). 

'^ Austin says, in his *' Life and Times of Wendell Phillips," p. 34 : 
" During his college life Mr. Phillips rarely read speeches, or even 
had any taste for oratory." This is an evident error, and is contra- 
dicted by the concurrent testimony of all his classmates, as witness th? 
authorities cited. 



IV. 

THE YOUNG LAWYER. 

The orthodox steps in the upward course of a 
well-born and rich young Bostonian, iifty years ago, 
were : First, the Public Latin School ; next Harvard 
College ; and then the Harvard Law School. Two 
of these steps Phillips had already taken ; in the au- 
tumn of 1 83 1 he took the third, and seated himself 
to be instructed by Judge Story — a new Paul at the 
feet of a modern Gamaliel. Meantime, his college 
classmates were scattered everywhither — most of 
them dismissed into oblivion ; for many graduates 
when they get a diploma only add a sheepskin to 
a sheep's-head, and provoke the spectators to cry 
" Bah !" Some of the Class of '33, however, drew 
out of the crowd of nonentities. Of those mentioned 
in these pages Appleton sauntered off to a life of 
belles - lettres enjoyment — literary gormandism. 
Motley sailed away to continue his studies in Berlin 
and Gottingen, and by and by to write himself into 
immortality. Sumner went, with Phillips, to the 
Harvard Law School, where the two continued and 
increased their intimacy. 

Judge Story was a legal luminary of the first mag- 
nitude — the peer of Marshall. His students wor- 
shipped him. Both Phillips and Sumner shared in 
this feeling, and counted it as chief among their 
privileges that they might sit on his benches. The 



50 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

school was divided into three classes — the Senior, 
Middle, and Junior ; and the course covered three 
years. In those early da3^s the attendance was com- 
paratively small, the whole number of students being 
forty in 1833. This was a happy circumstance for 
them because they were individualized. Each re- 
ceived a fair share of the preceptor's personal atten- 
tion, and the instruction took the form of a recitation 
rather than of a lecture, as now. The progress was 
correspondingly rapid ; while the relations of the 
students to the professors and to one another were 
close and delightful. Phillips at once took and main- 
tained a high rank ; though he did not permit his 
outside interests to dwarf by disuse. The practice 
of athletics was rigidly adhered to, while his miscel- 
laneous reading broadened and deepened. His one 
regret at this time was that his studies continued to 
separate him from his widowed mother, for the Law 
School was at Cambridge. But he knew her heart 
and prayers were with him, and both got consola- 
tion from frequent, if brief meetings. 

He was especially fond of those aspects and prin- 
ciples of the law which presented it as a science, as 
the source and seat of human justice. The saying 
of Coke made a great impression on him, that " rea- 
son is the life of the law ; nay, the common law itself 
is nothing else but reason ;" * and he would have 
agreed with Froude, that " our human laws are, or 
should be, but the copies of the eternal laws, so far 
as we can read them." "^ But while particularly at- 
tracted toward legal philosophy, Phillips was not 
lacking in the grasp of details, nor reluctant to sub- 



' First Institute. • " Short Studies in Great Subjects. " " Calvinism.' 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 5 I 

ject himself to the drudgery incidental to the mas- 
tery of forms and statutes.' He did not find any 
department of the study dry/ How could he, when 
the fire of a mind like Story's kindled it ? 

In a characteristic passage Mr. George William 
Curtis paints Wendell Phillips as his study of the 
law proceeded : " Doubtless the sirens sang to him, 
as to the noble youth of every country and time. 
If, musing over Coke and Blackstone, in the full 
consciousness of ample powers and of fortunate op- 
portunities, he sometimes forecast the future, he saw 
himself succeeding Fisher Ames, and Harrison Gray 
Otis, and Daniel Webster, rising from the bar to the 
Legislature, from the Legislature to the Senate, 
from the Senate — who knew whither ? — the idol of 
society, the applauded orator, the brilliant champion 
of the elegant repose and the cultivated conserva- 
tism of Massachusetts. The delight of social ease, 
the refined enjoyment of taste in letters and art, 
opulent leisure, professional distinction, gratified 
ambition — all these came and whispered to the young 
student. And it is the force that can tranquilly put 
aside such blandishments with a smile, and accept 
alienation, outlawry, ignominy, and apparent defeat, 
if need be, no less than the courage which grapples 
with poverty and outward hardship, and climbs over 
them to worldly prosperity, which is the test of the 
finest manhood. Only he who knows the worth of 
what he renounces gains the true blessing of renun- 
ciation." ' 

At this hour, however, only the anticipations were 

^ The remark of Judge Hopkinson, his classmate. 

* /if., Sumner's Testimony also. 

» " Eulogy of Wendell Phillips," pp. 6, 7. 



52 "WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

present — the renunciation was hidden behind the 
impenetrable veil of futurity. 

Three years, exactly, after the commencement of 
his legal course, Phillips found himself in the pos- 
session of his professional degree, viz., in September, 
1834. With the blessing of Judge Story, who fore- 
told for him an unprecedented career (which he had, 
but in a very different sense from Story's prophecy), 
and with the even more valued benediction of his 
mother, he was admitted to the bar." 

Soon after this important event, he went away on 
a short tour, travelling as far as Philadelphia. Here, 
at a fashionable boarding-house, whither he had 
gone as the escort of a bevy of ladies, he met Tre- 
lawny, the English friend of Byron and Shelley. 
Trelawny was there in attendance upon Mrs. Fanny 
Kemble Butler, the leading actress of the day, of 
whom he professed to be an admirer. He had been 
in South Carolina, at the house of the lady's hus- 
band, Pierce Butler, and was on his way to Niagara. 
The Englishman, who had learned, or unlearned, 
his moralit}- in the clubs of Pall Mall and with the 
brace of scapegrace poets with whom he had asso- 
ciated on the Continent, shocked the young Puritan 
by the open expression of atrocious sentiments re- 
specting women — boasting of his success with them, 
and declaring that no woman ought to live beyond 
the age of twenty.* 

Facing homeward, Phillips stopped for a few days 
in New York. In some way he made the acquaint- 
ance of Aaron Burr during his tarry. The slayer of 
Hamilton was exceedingly polite and showed him 



1 «« 



Recollections of Wendell Phillips," by F. B. Sanborn (ms.). 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 53 

the sights. Soon after his return Burr visited Bos- 
ton. Phillips called on him at the Tremont Hotel, 
and offered to act the part of a cicerone. Among 
other places they went to the Athenasum, then on 
Pearl Street, to see the pictures and look at the 
library. As they walked down the hall, between 
the alcoves, Phillips caught sight of a bust of Ham- 
ilton, one of the ornaments of the library, which he 
had forgotten was there. He tried on some pretext 
to draw Burr in another direction ; but he, too, had 
seen the bust and marched straight up to it. He 
stood facing it for a moment, then turned and said : 
** A remarkable man — a very remarkable man." 
Upon this he wheeled on both heels in military style 
and moved on again with great composure.* 

Mr. Phillips's first public honor — his very earliest 
recognition as an orator — came from New Bedford, 
whose authorities, just after his graduation, invited 
him to deliver the Fourth of July address. The late 
Charles T. Congdon, an eminent journalist, paints 
a pen-portrait of the scene : 

" When Phillips stood up in the pulpit I thought 
him the handsomest man I had ever seen. When 
he began to speak, his elocution seemed the most 
perfect to which I had ever listened, and I was sure 
that the orations of Cicero were given with smaller 
effect. Even then the future orator of the Abolition- 
ists was an admirable speaker ; nor did he, though 
scarcely past his majority, lack the grace and force 
of language with which the whole country has since 
become familiar. " " 



* " Recollections of Wendell Phillips," by F. B. Sanborn (ms.). 
' ** Recollections of a Journalist." 



54 WENDKl.L I'HILLIPS. 

Desiring to prepare himself thoroughly before 
engaging in practice, the young lawyer went from 
Boston to Lowell, and entered the office of Thomas 
(afterward Judge) Hopkinson ; his purpose being to 
familiarize himself with the code and with technical 
methods. Mr. Hopkinson had been his classmate 
at the Law School, but was older. He made both 
fame and money from the start, and welcomed the 
brilliant Bostonian with both hands outstretched. 
Fain would he have kept him in Lowell and admitted 
him into partnership,' but the pet of Judge Story 
had other plans. After a few months of persistent 
toil his object was accomplished, and he returned to 
Boston, not, however, before meeting and beginning 
an acquaintance with that singular man, Benjamin 
F. Butler, then an errand boy in a neighboring law 
office.^ 

And now at last Wendell Phillips, with all these 
3'ears of diligent preparation behind him, with a 
mind which is a teeming storehouse of accumulated 
material manipulated by faculties rigorously trained, 
with a body which is a model of symmetry and 
strength, with the manners of a prince, genius in his 
face and honey on his lips, opens his office, hangs 
out his sign,^ puts up his library, and cries, 
" Ready !" 

How did he get on ? 

Here we must stop to notice and refute a singular 
misunderstanding. One of his biographers and one 
of his eulogists have given wide currency to the 

^ Letter of Judge Hopkinson, in possession of the writer. 
^ Vide the Letter of Benjamin F. Butler in Boston Globe^ February 
4th, 1884. 

2 George L. Austin, in his " Life of Wendell Phillips," p. 44, 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 55 

Statement that the young lawyer met with no suc- 
cess — that he waited in that spick-and-span office 
" for clients who did not come." ' No proof is ad- 
duced of this unlikely assertion, save, in one case, 
the hazy recollection of an aged friend of his younger 
days. On the other hand, we have the probabilities 
of the case, which are overwhelmingly contradictory 
of this mistake. With his position, acknowledged 
ability and address, how could he fail to capture a 
practice ? But, better still, we have the testimony 
of Mr. Phillips himself. " He often," writes a lady 
who was much in his family, and who knew him, 
perhaps, better than any other person save his wife, 
** spoke to me of his practice and the nature of it. 
* Very much,' he said, * was office work — drawing up 
legal papers, wills, etc' He would sometimes say, 
with a smile, he did better then as a young lawyer 
than most young men do to-day upon entering the 
profession. * Those two opening years I paid all 
my expenses, and few do it now.' " * 

To the same effect speaks Mr. Sumner, who was 
perfectly familiar with the facts, and who declared, 
not long before his death, that " when Mr. Phillips 
became an Abolitionist he withdrew from the roll of 
Massachusetts lawyers the name of the greatest." ^ 

Mr. A. H. Grimke, too, a learned and eloquent 
colored man, writes that Mr. Phillips himself in- 
formed him that his practice was extensive and suc- 
cessful.* 

Nobody would be more likely to possess informa- 

* George William Curtis, in his " Eulogy," p. 8. 

• Mrs. William Sumner Crosby, quoted in the " Eulogy of W. 
Phillips," by Theodore D. Weld, p. 19. 

■ Ib^ * lb. 



$6 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

tion on this point than Mr. Phillips's old friend and 
coworker, James Redpath, who compiled his vol- 
ume of " Speeches and Lectures," and he says, in 
the last edition of that volume, in his biographical 
notice : "A large and increasing practice so occu- 
pied his time that he forgot all else. In the trial of 
cases at the bar lie was training his eloquence, and 
before juries he was modulating that voice so soon 
to thrill humanity." ' 

We may be sure, therefore, that it was not because 
he was wearied from " waiting for clients who did 
not come," that Wendell Phillips soon took down his 
sign and closed his office. Future chapters will dis- 
close the reason. 



* See the volume iu^If. 



V. 

THE MARTYR AGE. 

The afternoon of October 21st, 1835, was charm- 
ing, the air balmy, with a touch of tonic in it. Wen- 
dell Phillips sat beside an open window in his office 
on Court Street reading. Suddenly his attention 
was attracted by shoutings — angry, menacing, pro- 
fane — accompanied by the tramp of hurrying feet 
along the sidewalk. The young lawyer rose and 
leaned over the window-sill. He saw a crowd half 
a block away on Washington Street. Evidently 
they were acting under great excitement. What 
was the matter ? Leaving the window he put on his 
hat and sallied forth. Presently he was in the midst 
of the crowd. He found it a mob. They were con- 
fronting the Anti-Slavery office at the head of Wash- 
ington Street, while four or five thousand gesticulat- 
ing, vociferating men were trying to push their way 
up the narrow stairs and into the hall, which was up 
two flights. 

Mr. Phillips stood and watched. Now he sees the 
mayor (Theodore Lyman) come on the scene. He 
hears him vainly beseecJi the people to disperse, in- 
stead of commanding them to do so. In a moment 
the mayor disappears ; he has gone into the build- 
ing. Now some thirty women, pale but composed, 
come down the stairs and march in procession along 
the street and so away amid the hoots and insults 



58 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

of the rabble. Among these brave ladies is one des- 
tined to become Mrs. Wendell Phillips,' though as 
yet they have not consciously met. 

But look yonder ! A man bare-headed, with a rope 
about his waist, liis clothing torn and bedraggled, 
but with the erect head, calm face, and flashing eyes 
of a martyr going to the stake, ^ is dragged toward 
the City Hall,' which is just at hand. " Kill him !" 
" Lynch him !" " Hang the Abolitionist !" these ex- 
clamations are hurled at the composed prisoner as 
though they had been missiles. 

'• Who is that?" asks Mr. Phillips. 

'* That?" is the answer of a bystander. " Why, 
that's Garrison, the d — d Abolitionist. They are 
going to hang him." 

The young man sees Colonel John C. Park, the 
commander of the Boston regiment, of which he is 
himself a member. Approaching him, he says : 
" Colonel, why doesn't the mayor call for the guns ? 
This is outrageous !" 

" Why," retorts the officer, " don't you see that 
the regiment is in the mob ?" * 

Profoundly astonished he observes this fact, and 
further notices that the mob is composed of " gentle- 
men of property and standing," his friends and asso- 
ciates on Beacon Hill ! " A mob in broadcloth ! 
Being now shut out from further observations of the 



' Vide ** William Lloyd Garrison," by his sons, vol. ii., p. 12, 
note. 

^ The remark of Charles Sprague, the banker-poet, quoted In ib.^ 
p. 22. 

3 Ib„ p. 23. 

■* lb., p. 32. See Phillips's " Speeches and Lectures,** p. 213. 

^ lb., p. 33. 



WENDELT, PHILLIPS. 59 

scene by the intervening multitude, and, indeed, 
supposing that the authorities would keep Mr. Gar- 
rison in the City Hall until it should be safe for him 
to venture to his home, Mr. Phillips walked slowly 
back to his office in deep thought. 

On the morrow he learned that he had not seen 
the drama through ; that Mr. Garrison had been 
new-clad in borrowed raiment in the mavor's room, 
hurried into 'a hack and, at the risk of his life, sent 
off to jail as a disturber of the peace, while the mob- 
ocrats were permitted to saunter off without any at- 
tempt at their arrest ! ' He also discovered from 
the newspapers that the occasion of the riot had been 
a meeting of the " Boston Female Anti-Slavery 
Society." Here, too, he found that Mayor Lyman 
played an opera-boiiffe part, turning the ladies (noble 
women, graced with manifold accomplishments) out- 
of-doors instead of the rioters ; contributing to, not 
resisting, the disgrace of trampling upon the dearest 
right of liberty — free speech. Most surprising of 
all, the press of the city, with hardly an exception, 
extolled the mob and gloried in the shame ! Him- 
self a member of the bar, trained to feel that there 
was more force in the writ of a constable than in the 
bayonet of a soldier, supposing that he lived under 
the reign of law rather than mob violence, he was 
rudely awakened from these pleasant dreams to real- 
ize the fact that, in the country of which he was a 
proud citizen, an unpopular minority had no rights 
which the State was bound to respect, that law was 
not worth the parchment on which it was engrossed 
when it stood in the way of popular prejudice. It 



* Phillips's " Speeches and Lectures," p. 216. 



6o WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

was his lirst, but by no means his last lesson in the 
essential weakness and limitation of republican gov- 
ernment. 

And now, at the moment when Wendell Phillips's 
attention was first practically drawn to the momen- 
tous issue, we pause to outline the state of the popu- 
lar mind on the question of slavery. 

The patriots and sages who created the United 
States were, almost without exception,- opposed to 
slavery. Many of them were practical Abolitionists 
— Washington and Patrick Henry, for instance, freed 
their slaves. Nevertheless they recognized slavery 
as an existing institution. They believed it would 
eventually die ; it was already dead in the North. 
But meantime they protected it against an uprising 
on the part of the slaves by the insurrectionary guar- 
antee of the Constitution. They foisted into that 
fundamental document the three-fifths slave basis of 
representation, and thus unwittingly gave the task- 
masters a powerful political motive for retaining 
slavery. And they agreed that the accursed slave- 
trade should continue in full blast for twenty years 
from the date of the adoption of the instrument. 
These w^ere three sops to Cerberus. What did they 
matter ? Were not the republican idea, the laws of 
trade, the voice of religion against the curse ? The 
very doctrine of equality, which was the right hand 
of the Constitution, would — must — sooner or later, 
smite the system into the grave. So they reasoned. 
Mistaken men ! " He needs a long spoon," says the 
proverb, " who sups with the devil." Referring to 
this error, Mr. Phillips said : " God gives manhood 
but one clew to success — equal and exact justice ; 
that He guarantees shall be always expediency. De- 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 6l 

viate one hair's breadth — plant only the tiniest seed 
of concession — you know not how ' many and tall 
branches of mischief shall grow therefrom.' " * 

For a time, however, all went well. Randolph 
pronounced slav^ery "a volcano in full operation." 
Abolition societies sprang up everywhere.. Frank- 
lin, Rush, and their compeers were glad and proud 
to act as their presidents. Slavery stood cap in hand 
and begged leave to be. Its tone was apologetic. 

Presently the scene changed. In an evil hour 
" the devil hovered over Charleston with a hand- 
ful of cotton-seed (again we quote Mr. Phillips). 
Dropped into sea-island soil and touched by the 
magic of Massachusetts brains (referring to Eli Whit- 
ney's invention of the cotton-gin, which instantly 
made the culture of cotton cheap and profitable), it 
poisoned the atmosphere. That cotton fibre was a 
rod of empire such as Caesar never wielded. It fat- 
tened into obedience pulpit and rostrum, court, 
market-place, and college, and leashed New York 
and Philadelphia to its chair of State. In 1787 slave 
property, worth, perhaps, two hundred millions of 
dollars, strengthened by the sympathy of all other 
capital, was a mighty power. It was the Rothschild 
of the State. The Constitution, by its three-fifths 
slave basis, made slave-holders an order of nobles. 
This was the house of Hapsburg joining handc with 
the house of Rothschild. Prejudice of race was the 
third strand of the cable, bitter and potent as Catho- 
lic ever bore Huguenot, or Hungary ever spit on 
Moslem. This fearful trinity won to its side that 
mysterious omnipotence called Fashion — a power 



Speeches and Lectures," p. 377. 



62 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

which, without concerted action, without thought, 
law, or religion on its side, seems stronger than 
them all. Such was slavery. In its presence the 
North knelt and whispered. When slavery could 
not buUv, it bubbled its victim." ' 

In these circumstances the early repugnance to 
the " peculiar institution" began to fade away. 
Those Abolition societies one by one disbanded. 
Business, quickened by the impulse which came 
from the gigantic traffic in cotton, stifled conscience 
in order to make money. Thus the great centres 
of trade, from New Orleans to Boston, were bribed 
into complicity. Society, borrowing its tone from 
wealth, spread its screen over human bondage. Law 
soon found or made precedents and sanctions, for 
did not a fat retainer jingle in its hands ? The pulpit 
opened the Bible and turned back to the Book of 
Genesis for a scriptural warrant, in obedience to 
the demand of the slavery-infected pews. Ah, it 
was not slavery that was dying, as the fathers 
dreamed, it was anti-slavery ! The South, which 
began by being apologetic, now reversed the role 
and arrogantly commanded, while the North became 
abject. 

Serfdom in Russia was dreadful. Bondage in 
Brazil was wicked — it was at a good, salt-sea dis- 
tance. But slavery in America was a necessity — ■ 
a commercial, political, social, religious necessity, 
which let any one gainsay at his peril ! Here it was 
entirely proper to knock men down under the ham- 
mer of the auctioneer, whip women to prostitution, 
and sell babies by the pound. There was money in 



Speeches and Lectures," p. 377. 



WENDELL PFIILLIPS. 63 

it. Traffic in human flesh ! Why, ask the minister 
if Abraham did not own slaves, and if Paul did not 
return the fugitive Onesimus ? 

Such was the strangely altered condition of the 
public mind when, in the year 1829, suddenly uprose 
a young man who new-voiced the testimony of the 
fathers against slavery, and did it with an emphasis 
all his own. Who was he? His name was WiUiam 
Lloyd Garrison. Born in Newbury port, in Massa- 
chusetts, in 1805, his earlier years were passed as a 
printer's apprentice. He had a genius for ethics, 
and soon began to write for his master's journal, 
the Newburyport Herald, upon current, moral, and 
political questions, which he did acceptably. Grad- 
uating from this printing-office, his high school and 
college, he started a newspaper in his native town, 
the Free Press, which gasped through a few issues 
and then died. Mr. Garrison made his way to Bos- 
ton and tried again, the National Philanthropist being 
the title of his venture. It was the first journal ever 
established as the champion of total abstinence. 
Here he met Benjamin Lundy, a middle-aged Quaker 
and a moral hero, who, at his own cost, was pub- 
lishing in Baltimore, in slave- holding Maryland, a 
small monthly called the Genius of Universal Eman- 
eipation, then the only distinctively anti-slavery peri- 
odical in America.^ Mr. Lundy had come to Bos- 
ton to solicit subscribers and to raise funds for the 
prosecution of his unequal war. These two men 
recognized in one another a kindred spirit, and Mr. 
Garrison's attention was now explicitly directed to 
the question of slavery. Soon after the young Mas- 



Johnson's .y<w Universal Cyclopcedia^ article " Lundy." 



64 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

sachusetts editor went to Bennington, in \ ermont, 
to edit the village newspaper there (the ^^ourjial of the 
Times) in support of John Quincy Adams for the 
Presidency. Now he began to discuss slavery in 
earnest. Mr. Lundy again joined him while thus 
engaged and pleaded with him to unite in the publi- 
cation of the Baltimore organ. This he did in 1829.' 
The partners did not agree in their views. Mr. 
Lundy was a gradual emancipationist, and favored 
the colonization of the slaves just as fast as they 
should be freed. Mr. Garrison, with intuitive sa- 
gacit3^ saw the absurdity and impossibility of this 
scheme in his first study of the problem, and hit at 
once by a stroke of genius upon the onl}^ basis on 
which the moral war could be waged, viz., imme- 
diate and unconditional emancipation." He reasoned 
thus : Is slavery wrong anywhere ? Then it is 
wrong everywhere. Is it wrong for a da}' ? Then 
it is wrong for a year — wrong to the end of time. 
Is the wrongdoer bound to do right anywhere and 
at any time ? Then he is bound to do right every- 
where and instantly. So he hit upon his talisman 
and coined his war-cry. 

But how, with their different views, could these 
two edit the same paper ? Mr. Lundy proposed 
that each of them should sign his own contributions 
and feel free to publish his own doctrine. Thus the 
Genius of Universal Emancipation, like Cowper's '' Or- 
ator Puff," had two " tones to its voice." One was a 
tone of thunder, while the other was the tone of a 



^ These statements are summarized from " William Lloyd Garrison," 
by his sons, vol. i., pp. 36-137. 

^ See Wendell Phillips's " Eulogy of Garrison," published by Lee 
& Shepard, Boston. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 65 

zephyr. What was the result ? Mr. Lundy's teach- 
ings had no result. Even Baltimore, the centre of 
the domestic slave-trade, gave no heed to his mild 
remonstrances. It was like bombarding Gibraltar 
with cologne water. When Mr. Garrison spoke the 
city was stirred as by an earthquake. He was 
speedily thrown into jail. At the end of forty-nine 
days his fine and bill of costs (he had been tried and 
found guilty of libel for denouncing a certain Mr. 
Todd for conducting an interstate slave-trade) were 
paid by Arthur Tappan,^ of New York, an eminent 
merchant, then a colonizationist, but known soon 
after as among the most active of Abolitionists ; and 
the victim of free speech was set at liberty. 

This experience taught Mr. Garrison that he had 
selected the wrong scene for his crusade ; that a 
preliminary work needed to be done before slavery 
could be successfully assailed ; that the right to dis- 
cuss the question must be first established. Free 
speech was now deemed treason by tlie State and 
condemned as heresy by the Church. Where should 
this central truth of liberty be vindicated ? Mani- 
festly not in the midst of coffle-gangs and slave-pens, 
where his voice would be drowned by the rattle of 
shackles and the machinery of oppression in thunder- 
ous operation. Hence, dissolving his partnership 
with Mr. Lundy, he set out upon a prospecting tour. 
In giving his experience, he wrote : 

" Every place that I visited gave fresh evidence 
of the fact that a greater revolution in public senti- 
ment was to be effected in the free States (and partic- 
ularly in New England) than at the South. I found 



William Lloyd Garrison," by his sons, vol. i., p. 190. 



66 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

contempt more bitter, opposition more active, de- 
traction more relentless, prejudices more stubborn, 
and apathy more frozen than among slave-holders 
themselves. Of course there were individual ex- 
ceptions to the contrary. This state of things af- 
flicted, but did not dishearten me. I determined, at 
every hazard, to lift up the standard of emancipation 
in the eyes of the nation, within sight of Bunker Hill, 
and in the birthplace of liberty." ' 

Accordingly he returned to Boston and established 
the Liberator^' This was in 183 1. Supposing that 
he would have a certain ally in the churches if he 
could but win them to consider the question of 
slavery, Mr. Garrison became an itinerant mission- 
ary and waited upon clergyman after clergyman. 
Being of the orthodox faith in those days, he began 
Avith the Rev. Dr Lyman Beecher. 

*' No," said the divine, with a shake of the head ; 
" I have too many irons in the fire already." 

'' Then," was the solemn reply, " you had better 
take all the rest out and put this in." ' 

The truth is, that Dr. Beecher was a colonization- 
ist. He preached immediate repentance to sinners, 
with a caveat in the case of slavery. Of all sug- 
gested remedies for slavery colonization was the 
most preposterous. All the shipping of the world 
would not have sufficed to ferry the slaves back to 
i\frica. And had that been possible, what hope was 
there that the masters would consent, or if they did, 
that the slaves would go ? The conviction is irre- 

' " Garrison and his Times," by O. Johnson, pp. 41, 42. 
^ lb., p. 50. " William Lloyd Garrison," by his sons, vol. i,, 
p. 219. 
^ " Garrison and his Times," p. 44. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 6; 

sistible that many consciences, pinched by a sense 
of the sin of slavery, but unwilling- to accept the 
only honest and adequate remedy, salved their aching 
with this fantasy. As regards Dr. Lyman Beecher, 
he did make vicarious atonement by the gift to Anti- 
Slavery, later on, of his son, Henry Ward Beecher, 
whose tongue became like the stone in David's sling 
to smite the Goliath-evil ; and of his daughter, Har- 
riet Beecher Stowe, whose pen impaled it. The old 
man's loins were wiser than his head ! 

From Dr. Beecher, Mr. Garrison went to the 
Rev. Dr. William Ellery Channing, the chief of the 
Unitarians, with no greater success. Dr. Channing 
sympathized, but would not act. Then he visited 
Jeremiah Evarts, the famous Secretary of the 
" American Board of Commissioners for Foreign 
Missions," and an able champion of the Indians. 
But he considered that there was a great difference 
between red and black. He admired the one color 
and disliked the other. Besides, many of the Cher- 
okees and Choctaws were themselves slave-holders ! ' 

Surprised but not dismayed, the editor of the 
Liberator continued his Diogenes-quest for an honest 
man. He flashed his lantern through the thick dark- 
ness of Boston, of Massachusetts, of New England 
— vainly I Or if he met with any success, the excep- 
tions were so few and so obscure that they only 
established the rule of indifference that deepened 
into vicious hostility. The clergy were against 
slavery in the abstract, but were clear that it ought 
not to be interfered with at the South. Abraham 
and Onesimus were constantly flung into the young 



^ " Garrison and his Times," by O. Joiinson, pp. 45, 46. 



68 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Abolitionist's face. This chapter in the history of 
American Christianity is fitted to wring tears from 
the eyes of angels. It was the age of the reign of 
Satan in the Kingdom of God. Behold an inherent 
defect in the voluntary system, which puts the pulpit 
at the mercy of the pews, and makes it martyrdom 
for the minister to preach what the parish disallows. 

Mr. Garrison next tried the Quakers, moved to it, 
perhaps, by his old relations with Mr. Lundy. They 
had been the immemorial friends of the oppressed, 
for had not the iron entered their own souls ? But 
now they were become rich and respectable. They 
were the sharpest of traders, and their greed choked 
their consciences. Their ears were stuffed with cot- 
ton so that they could not hear the sighs of the 
bondmen. 

There was a time, as some one has said, when one 
Ouaker was enough to shake the country for twenty 
miles around ; but now it required the country for 
twenty miles around to shake one Quaker ! ' There 
were some bright exceptions among them, as among 
the other sects. John G. Whittier was one. He 
had already attuned his harp for freedom, and begun 
to sing a race into liberty and himself into immor- 
tality. Arnold Buffum, of Lynn, in Massachusetts, 
was another, and he became the first President of the 
first Anti-Slavery Society in America that was es- 
tablished on the principle of immediate emancipa- 
tion.^ There were others less well known. 

" Well, Perez, I hope thee's done running after 
the Abolitionists," said a high-seat friend to one of 



^ " Garrison and his Times," by Oliver Johnson, p. 21. 
■lb., p. 94. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. ' 6^ 

his humbler brethren. '* Verily, I have," returned 
Perez ; "I've caught up with and gone just a little 
ahead of 'em !" ' 

Meantime the Liberator continued to appear, and 
was supported as miraculously as was Elijah in the 
famine. How the money came or was to come God 
only knew. The heroic editor lived for many 
months on faith, and such material provender, as he 
could procure from a neighboring bakery.^ The 
ofhce was in a garret. " Everything about it," re- 
marks Oliver Johnson, an eye-witness of and partici- 
pator in the experience, " had an aspect of slovenly 
decay, and Harrison Gray Otis well characterized it 
as ' an obscure hole — •' 

* Yet there the freedom of a race began.* 

The dingy walls ; the small windows bespattered 
with printers' ink ; the press standing in one corner, 
the composing stands opposite ; the long editorial 
and mailing table, covered with newspapers ; the 
bed of the editor and publisher on the floor — all 
these make a picture never to be forgotten." ^ 

The publication of the sheet which issued from 
these sorry quarters made a sensation. Each week 
its appearance was an event. Boston at the outset 
shook with laughter. It was a new edition of *' Don 
Quixote." The South recognized the danger at 
once. This voice was like its own — resolute, com- 
manding — the only voice its instinct made it fear. 
Here were conviction, indomitable will and courage 
never to submit nor yield. 



' " Garrison and his Times," by Oliver Johnson, p. 97. 

^ lb., p. 51. — 3 ji^^ pp, 51^ 52. 



70 WENDELL PHILLIP?. 

In condemnin^^ slavery as a sin ; in demanding 
that it be repented of and forsaken immediately and 
unconditionally because sinful ; in asserting the 
humanity of the negro and his consequent fitness for 
freedom (a fact which the whole country discred- 
ited, holding that a " nigger" was nothing but a 
type of cattle — an impious notion which slaverj' had 
spawned) ; in speaking right out on these points, 
with the directness and emphasis of Nathan when 
he said to the royal transgressor, " Thou art the 
man !" Mr. Garrison made the Liberator a spear of 
Ithuriel, whose touch transformed slave-holders into 
man-stealers and forced the disguised devil to dis- 
close himself/ 

One by one friends sought out the editor. By 
and by there were enough of these to permit the 
organization of a " New England Anti-Slavery So- 
ciety." Early in 1832 the association was formed, 
twelve apostles signing the constitution.^ The meet- 
ing was held in the school-room of the African Bap- 



^ " Him . . . they found 

Squat, like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, 

Assaying by his devilish art to reach 

The organs of her fancy, and with them forge 

Illusions as he list, phantasms and dreams ; 

Him thus intent, Ithuriel with his spear 

Touched lightly, for no falsehood can endure 

Touch of celestial temper, but returns 

Of force, to its own likeness : up he starts, 

Discovered and surprised." 

— Paradise Lost, B. iv. 

* Here are their names : William Lloyd Garrison, Oliver Johnson, 
Robert B. Hall, Arnold Buffum, William J. Snelling, John E. Fuller, 
Moses Thatcher, Joshua Coffin, Stillman B. Newcomb, Benjamin C. 
Bacon, Isaac Knapp, and Henry R. Stockton. Vide " Garrison and 
ms Times," by O. Johnson, p. 86, 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 71 

tist Church In Belknap Street, Boston, thereafter a 
frequent refuge of the Aboh'tionists in storm and 
tempest. As the meeting adjourned, and the twelve 
gentlemen stepped out into the dark night (it was 
snowing), Mr. Garrison remarked, impressively : 
" We have met this evening in this obscure school- 
house ; our numbers are few and our influence lim- 
ited ; but mark my prediction, Faneuil Hall shall 
erelong echo with the principles v/e have set forth. 
We shall shake the nation with their mighty power. " ' 
Surely he wore on that occasion the mantle of the 
old Hebrew prophet ! 

Toward the end of 1833 a great convention was 
held in Philadelphia, and the " American Anti- 
Slavery Society" was organized,^ an achievement 
which unified the scattered forces of Abolition and 
challenged the attention of the nation. The example 
proved contagious. A number of State societies, 
and in some cases county and city societies, were 
formed soon after. The agitation became intense. 
Mr. Garrison could not hold forth any worldly con- 
siderations to attract adherents. His case was like 
that of Garibaldi, who, desiring to liberate and 
unify Italy, went before a crowd of young men and 
appealed for recruits. 

" What are your inducements ?" they asked. 

** Poverty, hardship, battles, wounds, and — vic- 
tory /'* replied the hero. The Italians caught his 
enthusiasm and enlisted on the spot. In the same 
way did the Boston Abolitionist make headway. 

The alarmed South was loud -mouthed and threat- 



* *' Garrison and his Times," by O. Johnson, p. 88. 
'"William Lloyd Garrison," by his sons, vol. ii., chap, xii., 
passim. 



72 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

ening. The North, as usual, cnnged and asked for 
orders. As an indication of the spirit of the slav^e 
oligarchy read this paragraph, clipped from the 
Richmond JV/i ig' : 

" Let the hell-hounds at the North beware. Let them not feel 
too much security in their homes, or imagine that they who 
throw firebrands, although from, as they think, so safe a dis- 
tance, will be permitted to escape with impunity. There are 
thousands now animated with a spirit to brave every danger to 
bring those felons to justice on the soil of the Southern States, 
whose women and children they have dared to endanger by their 
hell-concocted plots. We have feared that Southern exaspera- 
tion would seize some of the prime conspirators in their very 
beds, and drag them to meet the punishment due their offences. 
We fear it no longer. We hope it may be so, and our applause 
as one man shall follow the successful enterprise." 

Here is another extract, taken from the Columbia 
Telescope, a prominent and influential journal in South 
Carolina : 

" Let us declare, through the public journals of our country, 
that the question of slavery is not and shall not be open to dis- 
cussion ; that the very moment any private individual attempts 
to lecture us upon its evils and immorality, in the same moment 
his tongue shall be cut out and cast upon the dunghill." 

Taking their cue from such utterances as these 
(and these were only two solos in a diabolical 
chorus), Governor McDuffie, in a message to the 
Legislature of South Carolina, declared slavery " the 
corner-stone of the Republican edifice ;" asserted 
that the laboring class of any community, " bleached 
or unbleached," was a "dangerous element in the 
body politic ;" predicted that within twenty-five 
years the white laboring people of the North would 
be virtually reduced to slavery, and ended by de- 
manding that the laws should be so amended every- 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 73 

where as to punish any interference with or discus- 
sion of Southern institutions ** with death without 
benefit of clergy." ' 

The Legislature of the State, responding to this 
message, promptly resolved, " That South Carolina, 
having every confidence in the justice and friendship 
of the non-slave-holding States, announces her con- 
fident expectation, and she earnestly requests that 
the governments of these States will promptly and 
effectually suppress all those associations within 
their respective limits purporting to be Abolition 
societies." ^ 

North Carolina, Alabama, and Virginia adopted 
similar resolutions. And these were forwarded to 
the Northern Governors.^ How did they receive 
such insolent demands ? Precisely as the black 
slaves at the South received the whip. Most of 
them forwarded the communications to their respec- 
tive legislatures with no comment at all. Two of 
them, however, viz.. Governor \V. L. Marcy, of 
New York, and Governor Edward Everett, of Mas- 
sachusetts, outran the rest in the race of servility, 
echoed the demands of Governor McDuffie, of 
South Carolina, and recommended the legislatures 
of their respective States to make it a penal offence 
to speak or print against slavery.* Happily, the 
legislatures of New York and Massachusetts had 
more self-respect than their lackey-governors. The 
suggested legislation was attempted, but thanks to 
the efforts of the Abolitionists it did not carry. ^ 



' Vide " Garrison and his Times," by O. Johnson, pp. 213, 214. 
« lb., p. 214. ^ lb. 

*■ "William Lloyd Garrison," by his sons, vol. ii., pp. 75, 76. 
' lb., p. 76. " Garrison and his Times," byO. Johnson, pp. 214-17. 



74 WENDELL PIITLLIPS. 

With such a domineering spirit at the South and 
with such servility in high places at the North, it is 
not surprising that the sidewalks were unsafe for 
Abolitionists to tread ; that public halls were denied 
to them for their meetings ; that their publications 
were excluded from the mails ; that it became in- 
creasingly difficult for them to earn a livelihood in 
any line of trade ; that they were marked men, under 
the frown of State and Church, moral pariahs, invit- 
ing abuse and regarded as fit for death.' To be an 
Abolitionist in free America was in popular estima- 
tion, fifty years ago, what it was to be a Christian in 
the days of Nero, or what it is to be a Nihilist in 
Russia now. The very word embodied contempt 
and rage beyond expression. Anybody, every bod}^ 
felt free to kick and cuff, to damn and hang an 
Abolitionist. 

Theodore D. Weld,'' who was an active partici- 
pant in the scenes he describes, and who is remem- 
bered as a Demosthenes of eloquence by the few 
survivors of that period, paints, as only he .could, 
the treatment which he and others like him then 
received : 



1 See T. D. Weld's " Eulogy of Wendell Phillips," pp. 21-25. 

- Mr. Weld was born in Massachusetts in 1803. He studied at 
Andover, and followed Dr. Lyman Beecher to Lane Seminary, in 
Ohio, when that divine took charge of the institution. Here he be- 
came interested in the slavery question, abolitionized the seminary, 
took the field as an Anti- Slavery lecturer, and by his amazing 
eloquence speedily made his name and fame continental. Un- 
happily his excessive labors and exposures caused the loss of his voice 
and did what slavery could not do— silenced him. He is still living 
(1890), hale and hearty in a serene and honored old age, at Hyde 
Park, near Boston. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 75 

" Civilization presupposes a government of law. 
If law is abolished society sinks into barbarism. 
Sunk thus was this nation then in its relation to 
Abolitionists. Mobs had been for years everywhere 
in outburst against them. They were the victims 
of an indiscriminate ostracism. Everywhere they 
were doomed because they hated slavery and lived 
out that hate. In thousands of cases they were sub- 
jected to personal assaults, beatings, and buffetings, 
with nameless indignities. They were stoned, 
clubbed, knocked down, and pelted with missiles, 
oiten with eggs, and, when they could be gotten, 
spoiled ones. They were smeared with iilth, stripped 
of clothing, tarred, feathered, ridden upon rails, 
their houses sacked, bonfires made in the streets of 
their furniture, garments, and bedding, their vehicles 
and harnesses were cut and broken, and their do- 
mestic animals harried, dashed with hot water, 
cropped, crippled, and killed. Among these out- 
rages, besides assaults and breaches of the peace, 
there were sometimes burglaries, robberies, maim- 
ings, and arsons ; Abolitionists- were driven from 
their homes into the fields and the woods and their 
houses burned. They were dragged and thrust 
from the halls in which they held their meetings. 
They were often shot at and sometimes wounded. 
In one mob a number were thus wounded anr! 
one killed. For a quarter of a century our civiliza- 
tion was sunk to barbarism. The law, which to 
others was protection, to Abolitionists was sheerest 
mockery. Yea, more, it singled them out as its vic- 
tims. Professing to protect, it gave them up to rav- 
age and beckoned the spoilers to their prey. Of the 
tens of thousands who perpetrated such atrocities 



76 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

not one suffered the least legal penalty for those 
astounding violations of law !" ^ 

While such was the reception of the Abolitionists 
here at the North and in their own homes, and when 
it was proposed to padlock their lips by law, slave- 
holders might come into the free States with a ret- 
inue of slaves as long as the triumphal procession 
of an old Roman emperor, and with a harem that sug- 
gested the Turkish Sultan, with none to molest them 
or make them afraid. And from the centre of the 
indecent cortege the\ denounced the Abolitionists 
as cut-throats. It was an outrage to attack slavery, 
but entirel}^ correct to practice and defend it ! Op- 
position was sin and defence was virtue ! 

Mr. Garrison, as the central figure in the accursed 
circle, was naturally the special target for conspira- 
tors to aim at. Already a price had been set upon 
his head by the State of Georgia of $5000, '^ a stand- 
ing bribe to any gang of ruffians to kidnap him and 
deliver the Samson of Abolition into the hands of 
the modern Philistines. That he was not seized on 
some dark night, hurried to the wharf near his office, 
and sent on some South-bound vessel to grind in the 
prison-house of the oppressors or make sport in the 
Temple of Dagon, is a miracle — further proof of the 
existence and Providence of God. 

Such is a crayon sketch of the public situation at 
the hour when the broadcloth mob fell under the 
eyes of Wendell Phillips in 1835 — the South omnip- 
otent and imperious, the North its errand-boy and 
lick-spittle ; the Abolitionists few in number, unin- 

* " Eulogy of Wendell Phillips," pp. 22, 23. 

^ See the legislative action of Georgia, quoted in "William Lloyd 
Garrison," by his sons, vol. i., pp. 247-49. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 77 

fluential in position, despised as fanatics and hated 
as incendiaries, banned by the slave-masters and 
mobbed at home, outcasts for their humanity, as the 
negroes were on account of their skin. America 
was a synonym for hell. 



I 



VI. 

THE NEW CLIENT. 

The intimacy of Wendell Phillips and Charles 
Sumner, as we have noted, commenced at the Boston 
Latin School, continued at college and in the Law 
School, and deepened with the lapse of time. They 
were often together. One day (it was early in 1836) 
they sat conversing in Mr. Phillips's office on Court 
Street, when a mutual friend, a Mr. Alford, burst in 
upon them. He informed them of his engagement 
to a Miss Grew, of Greenfield, in Massachusetts. 
Said he : 

I am going to Greenfield with my fianc(fe to- 
morrow, and a cousin of hers, a Miss Ann Terry 
Greene, is to accompan}' us. Xow vou know that 
in my condition ' two's compauN,' etc., and I wish 
you would go, both of you, and take care (jf the 
other lady. She will require the two of you, for 
she is the aurora borealJs in human form — the clever- 
est, loveliest girl you ever met. But I warn you 
that she is a rabid Abolitionist. Look out or she 
will talk you both into that ism before you suspc ct 
what she is at." 

After chafBng Alford, the two friends agreed to 

go- 

" It is only fair," remarked Mr. Sumner, " to help 
him out. Do as you'd be done by, eh, Wendell ?" 

The next mornine: was furiouslv stormy. When 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 79 

Mr. Sumner got up and looked out he muttered, '' I 
won't go on a stage ride (no railroads then) on such 
a day for any woman !" and ungallantly went back 
to bed. 

Mr. Phillips was more chivalrous — he went. 
While his- friend devoted himself to Miss Grew he 
made himself the cavalier of Miss Greene, who, true 
to the warning he had received, talked Abolition to 
him to the accompaniment of the rattling stage- 
coach. What of that ? Who cares what a charming 
girl talks about, so that she only talks ? Besides, 
Mr. Phillips was already deepl)^ interested in the 
question of slavery. His Anti-Slavery convictions 
dated back to 1831,^ the year of his graduation. 
True, he held them in an inactive, theoretical fash- 
ion. But they were there, and they had been 
warmed into new life by the Garrison mob. The 
burning words of this fair enthusiast added fresh fuel 
to the slumbering fire. When Jean d'Arc sounds to 
battle where is the soldier who can refuse to buckle 
on his armor ? All too soon did that stage-coach 
lumber into Greenfield ! 

Before they parted Mr. Phillips asked and obtained 
permission to continue the acquaintance. Miss 
Greene was a native and resident of Boston. Her 
admirer learned that she was an orphan and an heir- 
ess,'' though for the heiress part of it he cared noth- 
ing, for he was himself a man of independent for- 
tune, and one who would not have been swayed 
by mercenary considerations. Her home was not 
far from his own, with her uncle and aunt, Mr. and 



1 Weld's " Eulogy of Wendell Phillips," p. 20. 

? Her father was Benjamin Greene, a wealthy trader of Boston* 



8o WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Mrs. Henry G. Chapman/ who were warm friends 
and devoted adherents of Mr. Garrison.^ The lady 
was beautiful, splendidly educated, a marvellous 
conversationalist, and possessed a rare moral nature. 
She had withal a singular power of insight, and after 
the manner of her sex, could get to the bottom of a 
subject by a flash of intuition, and so reach a con- 
clusion which the male intellect might attain only 
by laborious reasoning. " Yes," confessed Mr. 
Phillips, in after years, " my wife made an out and 
out Abolitionist of me, and she always preceded me 
in the adoption of the various causes I have advo- 
cated." 

No wonder the young man found the personal 
charms of such a woman, inspired and aglow with 
lofty moral purpose, irresistible ! He came to see 
her, came again, and then kept coming. Within the 
year when the}^ first met their engagement was an- 
nounced.^ 

It was at the Chapman's fireside that Wendell 
Phillips was introduced to Mr. Garrison^ — his final 
step toward Abolition. These two men, so unlike 
in family, training, worldly prospects, so at one in 
conviction, courage, devotion, were from the start 
attracted to each other. And thus began that won- 
drous alliance which was to find its consummation 
and benediction in the rehabilitation of American 
liberty. 

Yet it was a strange coalition. For Mr. Garrison 
was a .plebeian, while ISlr. Phillips was an aristo- 



' " Ann Phillips," a Memorial Sketch, by Mrs. Alford, p. 3. 
* So Mr. Phillips told the writer. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. ' 8l 

crat. The one was a self-made man ; the other was 
the consummate product of New England culture. 
The first had no grace, save the highest, that of 
God ; the second had that highest, and added to it 
every other grace of mind and person that can adorn 
a man. The genius of the printer was the home- 
spun genius of intense moral conviction, that treads 
every obstacle under foot ; the genius of the lawyer 
was the genius of Plato in the Academy and Burke 
in the Senate, with contagious morality enough 
thrown in to infect the continent. One of these two 
allies was to become the executive of the Anti-Slavery 
movement ; the other was to supply the eloquence 
that should melt the fetters from a race and trans- 
form a nation. 

That meeting with Ann Terry Greene was a happy 
circumstance. As results of it the lady secured an 
ideal husband and won to a great reform its most 
powerful advocate. Mr. Phillips obtained a wife 
who became his perennial inspiration. Mr. Garri- 
son gained his most renowned ally, and the blacks 
may date from it the auspicious beginning of a 
triumphant end. 

Not long after meeting Mr. Garrison Wendell 
Phillips openly announced his adoption of Abolition 
principles and took his place among the " fanatics." 
The Rubicon was passed ! The boats were burned ! 
On June 14th, 1837, he rode out to Lynn, ten miles 
away, for the first time to attend an Anti- Slavery 
Convention.' It was the quarterly meeting of the 
Massachusetts Society. His maiden speech in the 
hated cause made that session forever memorable. 



William Lloyd Garrison," by his sons, vol. ii., p. 129. 



82 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

After reading a resolution which pledged the asi^em- 
blage to " special consecration," he proceeded to 
enforce it in an address which " charmed and sur- 
prised the audience."' Naturally, his classic style 
and exquisite modulation could not fail to surprise 
and charm. One passage is prophetic in its aspira. 
tion, and is characteristic, too, in its generous tribute 
to Mr. Garrison : 

" We would have ourselves the joy of seeing this work accom- 
plished. Before our eyes are closed, we wish to see the happy 
day which shall proclaim liberty to the captive. If it be possi- 
ble, let the shout of emancipated millions rise before his ear is 
dust whose voice first waked the trumpet-note which is rocking 
the nation from side to side. To him (need I name him ?) with 
at least equal truth may be applied the language of Burke to 
Fox : ' It will be a distinction honorable to the age, that the 
rescue of the greatest number of the human race from the great- 
est tyranny that was ever exercised, has fallen to the lot of one 
with abilities and dispositions equal to the task ; that it has 
fallen to the lot of one who has the enlargement to comprehend, 
the spirit to undertake, and the eloquence to support so great a 
measure of hazardous benevolence.' " ^ 

With this speech Mr. Phillips began his career as 
a reformer. He had gained a new client. He be- 
came attorney for the people in the Court of Con- 
science. Like the matchless sculpture of St. Martin 
sharing his cloak with a beggar, so he threw over 
the form of shivering humanity the warm protection 
of his gifts and advocacy. 

When it became known in Boston that the most 
talented of her young sons had become an Abolition- 
ist, the town was horrified. His family, in all its 
branches, was torn between pity for their misguided 

' "William Lloyd Garrison," by his sons, vol. ii., p. I2g. 
^ Vide Liberator, vol. vii., p. 63. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 83 

kinsman and a bitter sense of their own disgrace. 
His former classmates were for a space incredulous 
and then aghast. Beacon Hill rent its clothes and 
put ashes on its head. Everybody said : " It is 
suicide — political, professional, and social suicide." 
So it was. Boston was neither as large nor as dem- 
ocratic then as it is now. The blue-blood feeling 
was marked and strong. It was as fatal to break 
caste in Boston fifty 3^ears ago as it would have been 
in India. Those old families were republicans in 
profession and aristocrats in practice. They prided 
themselves as much upon their descent as did the 
English nobility. And the}^ resented as keenly any 
departure from conventional respectability as could 
the descendants of the_ Normans. It is at once 
laughable and pathetic to reflect that there was ever 
a time in republican and Christian America when 
a practical belief in the Declaration of Independence 
and the Sermon on the Mount was regarded as dis- 
reputable, proof that one was either a knave or a fool ! 
Wendell Phillips soon found that it was so. The circle 
in which he moved cut him dead. Old acquaintances 
grew strangely near-sighted when they met him on 
the street. Doors which before had opened to give 
him eager welcome were shut in his face. The class 
from which his professional advancement was to 
come withdrew their business from his hands. He 
saw all his bright prospects crumbling to the ground 
under his very eyes. He found himself an outcast 
in his native city — deserted and avoided as though 
stricken with leprosy. He was an Abolitionist. And 
what was that but a movable pest — corruption an- 
imate — death in life ? Any Abolitionist was despic- 
able : he most of all, because by birth and breeding 



84 WENDELL THILLIPS. 

he was a gentleman. Therefore the respectability 
of Boston stayed only long enough to brand him as 
" the friend of niggers," and then turned away from 
liim in unspeakable disgust. 

In all the older towns of this country — Boston, 
New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, St. Louis — 
class distinctions were formerly rigid as the etiquette 
of the Court of St. James. One aristocracy always 
sympathizes with another. This feeling is the cement 
that held together the " best" families of the North 
and the " first" families of the South. And this ex- 
plains why these families. North as well as South, 
abhorred the Abolitionists, who, in attacking slav- 
ery, were sapping caste itself. It was a new 
phase of the world-old contest between the classes 
and the masses. That one of their own order should 
go into the Abolition camp enraged the dons and 
donas. It was like deserting to the enemy in time 
of war. Hence Wendell Phillips was looked upon 
as a social Benedict Arnold. The marvel is, not 
that they felt as the}^ did, but that he felt as he did. 
The fact that he so soon and so completely emanci- 
pated himself from the narrow prejudices of such an 
environment, is the best proof of his moral greatness. 

But did he not feel his outlawry ? How could he 
help it ? Remember his position. Think of his out- 
look. But it doubly endears him to posterity that 
he never complained, never besought, never re- 
treated an inch, nor filed down a principle, nor soft- 
ened a phrase to regain his place and conciliate es- 
teem. He had counted the cost. He regarded his 
forfeited distinctions, all possible advancement within 
his reach, as " dust in the measure and fine dust in 
the balance," when weighed against the honor of 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 85 

standing with God and befriending those who were 
ready to perish. What he lost he valued ; what he 
gained he held as an abundant compensation. It 
hurt him to feel that he had disappointed those who 
loved him. All the more resolutely did he turn for 
consolation to the service of the poor and miserable 
and blind and naked. No such sacrifices have been 
made by any other American. But he had and has 
his exceeding great rev^^ard. All this the poet Low- 
ell has magnificently embalmed in a descriptive son- 
net which he wrote not long afterward and dedicated 
to Wendell Phillips : 

*' He stood upon the world's broad threshold : wide 

The din of battle and of slaughter rose ; 
He saw God stand upon the weaker side, 

That sank in seeming loss before its foes ; 
Many there were who made great haste and sold 

Unto the coming enemy their swords. 
He scorned their gifts of fame, and power, and gold. 

And, underneath their soft and flowery words, 
Heard the cold serpent hiss ; therefore he went 

And humbly joined him to the weaker part, 
Fanatic named, and fool, yet well content 

So he could be the nearer to God's heart, 
And feel its solemn pulses sending blood 

Through all the widespread veins of endless good." 



VII. 



IN FANEUIL HALL. 



Mr. Phillips and Miss Greene were married on 
October 12th, 1837.' He wedded an invalid — a life- 
long invalid, as it turned out. Through some defect 
of nervous organization"^ the lady, even as a child, 
was frequently shut up and closed in, being often, 
and as the time passed increasingly confined to her 
room. Beginning as lovers, they remained lovers 
to the end. Their honeymoon stretched from the 
altar to the grave. Because of his wife's ill-health 
the husband from the start added to the lover the 
tender nurse. And this function, also, was to find 
exercise until the final scene. Mrs. Phillips was in- 
ordinately fond of reading. When, as was often the 
case, she was too sick to hold a book, Mr. Phillips 
would be her eyes. This was her greatest treat. 
Those who have heard him read will know why, for 
in this delightful, and, strange to say, rare accom- 
plishment he had no rival. She had then and ever 
retained a singular transparent beauty — blue eyes, 
magnificent long hair, Hebe's complexion, and the 
form of Juno. In" the face of pain, and of the dep- 
rivation that comes from pain, she was joyous in 



^ Miss Mary Grew, Mrs. Phillips's cousin and life-long intimate, 
confirms this date. 

^ So says Dr. David Thayer, the family physician. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 87 

disposition, with unfailing good spirits, and fond 
of fun and stories, in which respect her husband 
matched her, so that hilarity was with them an abid- 
ing guest. " My better three quarters," was her 
favorite descriptive phrase of him. And, evidently, 
it had been love at first sight on her side as on his, 
for she confesses : " When I first met Wendell I 
used to think, ' It can never come to pass ; such a 
being as he is could never think of me.* I looked 
upon it as something as strange as a fairy-tale." ' 

To a relative, on her first birthday after marriage, 
she further expresses her feelings with a 7ia'ive pen : 

" November 19, 1837. 
" Do you remember it is Ann Terry's birthday, and that I am 
so aged ? Only last year I thought I shouM never see another 
birthday, but must leave him in the infancy of our love, in the 
dawn of my new life ; and how does to-day find me ? —the blessed 
and happy wife of one whom I thought I should never perhaps 
live to see. Thanks be to God for all His goodness to us, and 
may He make me more worthy of my Wendell. I cannot help 
thinking how little I have acquired, while Wendell, only two 
years older, seems to know a world more ; so 

" ' . . . that still the wonder grew, 
How one small head could carry all he knew.' " ^ 

In the midst of their new-born gladness, long be- 
fore the orange-blossoms had time to shrivel, an 
event occurred which was the occasion of Mr. Phil- 
lips's debut as an orator, and which gave him the 
world for an audience. 

The essential blasphemy of slavery lay in this, 
that it broke into and desecrated the temple of the 
Holy Ghost by reducing a man to be a chattel. It 



» " Ann Phillips," by Mrs. Alford, p. 5. * Jb., pp. 5, 6. 



88 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

dealt in men and women as a drover trades in cattle. 
It changed marriage into prostitution, and made 
every plantation a nest of brothels. It herded 
negroes together as swine herd. It sold their off- 
spring as hogs are sold. John Wesley, after living 
two years in the midst of slavery in Georgia, shook 
the dust from his feet against it and sailed from 
Savannah back to England, crying out as he left, 
" Slavery is the sum of all villainies." The truest, 
tersest, strongest half dozen words ever tabled 
against it. Well he knew that language had no 
word that could fitly name such a system. So in 
despair of naming it, he could only define it. As he 
gazed at it no wonder his eyes filled, his sight grew 
dim, his brain grew dizzy. He listened till shrieks 
stunned him. He pondered the ghastly horror till 
the breath he drew steamed rank with scent of 
blood ! ' We have learned in a previous chapter 
what befell the humane spirits who, in the land of 
liberty, ventured to repeat the definition of the great 
apostle of Methodism. Slavery now went a step 
further and proceeded from persecution to martyr- 
dom. On November 7th, 1837, it murdered the 
Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, at Alton, in Illinois. The 
story of his death has been often told. It cannot be 
told too often. The fact and the lesson of it, Ameri- 
cans are bound to reiterate in words of fire until 
"the deep damnation of his taking off" shall be 
burned into the indignant consciousness of every 
freeman. 

Mr. Lovejoy was a Presb3^terian clergyman, a 
graduate of Waterville College, in the State of 



» Weld's " Eulogy on Wendell Phillips," p. 25. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 89 

Maine, where he was born, and of Princeton The- 
ological wSeminary. He went to the West after com- 
pleting his studies and made a home in St. Louis. 
Here his sect made him the editor of their local or- 
gan, the Observer. He was not an Abolitionist. He 
had not grown up to that as yet. But he saw enough, 
heard enough, felt enough in that slave-holding com- 
munity to make him hate slavery. One day a negro 
killed an officer in attempting to avoid arrest. He 
was seized in jail by a gang of lynchers, taken out, 
chained to a tree, and burned to death. Mediaeval 
barbarism ! Efforts were made to punish the mur- 
derers. The judge (whose suggestive name was 
Lawless) charged the Grand Jury substantially as 
follows : "• When men are hurried by some mysteri- 
ous, metaphysical, electric frenzy to commit a deed 
of violence, they are absolved from guilt. If you 
should find that such was the fact in this case then 
act not at all. The case transcends your jurisdic- 
tion ; it is beyond the reach of human law." ' Of 
course they did not bring in an indictment. Mr. 
Lovejoy commented in the Observer upon this out- 
rageous charge as it deserved. Then the " mysteri- 
ous, metaphysical, electric frenzy" again found ex- 
pression, and his printing-office was gutted. The 
editor decided to remove his headquarters to Alton, 
in Illinois, ten miles up the Mississippi, on the free- 
soil side of the river. He was now on free soil, but, 
alas, not among free men ! No sooner was his press 
landed than a mob destroyed it. He procured a new 
one. This also was ruined.* Then he appealed to 
the mayor for protection. This magistrate affirmed 



Garrison and his Times," by Oliver Johnson, p. 223. '^ lb. 



90 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 



his inability to shield the victim, saying : "I have 
no police force." To this Mr. Lovejoy replied: 
*' Very well, I will get another press, and with youi 
consent I will enroll a special police force in the in- 
terest of law and order." The mayor assented. 
The defenders were marshalled. The third press 
arrived. The next night the grog-shops vomited 
forth their bloats, the building where the press was 
sheltered was assailed with incendiary torches and 
seditious muskets, and in the act of protecting his 
property, with the mayor's sanction, Mr. Lovejoy 
was shot down like a mad dog. As he fell, his hud- 
dle of supporters scattered amid a fusillade of bullets, 
the house was fired, and the press was for the third 
time flung into the Mississippi.' 

The news from Alton convulsed the continent. 
The South openly exulted. The North condemned 
the mob, but lamented the " imprudence" of the 
victim ; which reminds one of the man down in 
Maine who, in speaking of the prohibitory liquor law, 
said, " He was in favor of the law, but agin its ex- 
ecution ! ' ' Only the more thoughtful recognized the 
tragedy for what it was, and saw in it the burial of 
a bravo's dagger in the heart of liberty. 

Strangely enough Boston, which was farthest off, 
was most moved. It is greatly to the credit of the 
old town. A number of eminent citizens, headed by 
the Rev. Dr. Channing, applied for the use of Faneuil 
Hall in which to denounce the outrage ; not as 
Abolitionists, with whom few were affiliated, but as 
believers in free speech and a free press. The mayor 
and aldermen refused the hall on the ground that the 



* " Garrison and his Times," by O. Johnson, p. 226. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 9I 

country might regard the meeting " as the public 
voice of the city." ' This denial increased the agita- 
tion. Dr. Channing appealed to Boston in an open 
letter, which resulted in another application, signed 
by an enlarged number of influential names. Now 
the municipal authorities heard and obeyed ; the hall 
was opened. "^ 

What place could be so conspicuously fit for the 
rebuke of an attack on freedom as the " Cradle of 
Liberty ?" 

Faneuil Hall was built " at his own cost" and pre- 
sented to Boston in 1742, by Peter Faneuil, a wealthy 
merchant of the city, whose Huguenot ancestors had 
been driven out of France by the tyranny of Louis 
XIV., when, at the instigation of a mistress, he re- 
voked the Edict of Nantes ;^ just as the Pilgrims 
had been exiled from England by the inquisitive 
despotism of the Stuarts. Boston, in accepting 
the gift, named it after the generous donor. "^ Hence 
it belonged to liberty in its very origin. It received 
a further consecration when, in the days which ush- 
ered in the Revolution, the " Sons of Liberty" were 
wont to meet within its walls to cheer James Otis in 
his defiance of George III. and Lord North. " Cra- 



' "Garrison and his Times," by O. Johnson, p. 227. 

' lb. With Mr. Johnson all other authorities agree. 

^ See a curious book, " Dealings with the Dead," published in 
Boston in 1856, in which the descent and life of Peter Faneuil are 
more elaborately traced than anywhere else. 

^ lb. This was voted at a town meeting held in 1742. The hall 
was burned January 13th, 1761, nothing but the walls remaining. 
The town rebuilt it in 1762 — P. Faneuil having died soon after its first 
erection. In 1806 it was enlarged, its area being doubled on the 
ground, and another story was added. Since then it has remained as 
it now stands. 



^2 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

die of Liberty," indeed ! And now about to rock 
the lusty child again, and to become the cradle ot 
freedom, not for one race, but for all — to rock the 
genius of universal emancipation. 

Having obtained the hall, the managers of the meet- 
ing determined to use it in the daytime, their pru- 
dence leading them to fear lest the Alton mob might 
reappear in Boston under cover of the congenial 
darkness.' The behavior of the x\bolitionists, too, 
was admirable at this crisis. Although indignant 
beyond all others, their souls aflame, they carefully 
abstained from appearing in connection with the 
meeting, and their names were conspicuous only by 
their absence from the published call and the various 
preliminaries, like the images of Brutus and Cassias 
in the imperial procession in ancient Rome.'" In fact, 
they had no wish to add to the prevailing excite- 
ment, and were willing enough to have their places 
filled by more " respectable" citizens, if these would 
act. But they meant, of course, to go to Faneuil 
Hall. 

On December 8th, 1837, in the morning, the meet- 
ing was called to order. The old hall, used to 
crowds, was full to suffocation. The throng was 
divided into three factions : one third being free dis- 
cussionists, among whom were sprinkled here and 
there an Abolitionist (the salt which was to give savor 
to the hour) ; another third being mobocrats, present 
to make mischief ; while the remaining third were 
indifferent, idle spectators, attracted by curiosity and 
swayed to and fro by each speaker in turn, but hold- 



\ 



' " Garrison and his Times," p. 227. 

' " William Lloyd Garrison," by his sons, vol. ii., p. 189. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 93 

ing" the balance of power. ^ The proceedings opened 
quietly and decorously. The Hon. Jonathan Phil- 
lips, a wealthy Bostonian, a warm friend of Dr. 
Channing, and a kinsman of Wendell Phillips, took 
the chair. Dr. Channing made a brief but impres- 
sive address, speaking from a lectern set in front of 
the platform and well out toward the centre of the 
hall ; a position which he selected because he feared 
he might not be heard amid the rush and crush if 
farther back.^ Resolutions drawn by Dr. Channing 
were next offered and read by the Hon. Benjamin 
F. Hallet. These were seconded by George S. Hil- 
lard, Esq., in an incisive speech. 

As Mr. Hillard concluded there was a stir, then 
an outburst of anticipatory applause, as the Attor- 
ney-General of Massachusetts was seen to elbow his 
way down toward the great gilded eagle in the gal- 
lery over the main entrance, with the evident pur- 
pose of making a speech not on the programme. 
Everybody knew this of^cial— James Tricothic Aus- 
tin. He was a parishioner of Dr. Channing, a popu- 
lar politician, and a master of the art of captivating 
the crowd. With a red face and a bullying manner, 
thunder in his voice and demagogism on his lips, 
he at once, with practised skill, began an harangue 
clearly intended and adroitly adapted either to break 
up the meeting in a row or array it against the ob- 



' So writes Mrs. Chapman in a letter to Harriet Martineau, and 
quoted by her in an article in the Westminster /Review, December, 
1838, on '• The Martyr Age." 

2 Weld's " Eulogy," p. 34. There are no seats in Faneuil Hall. At 
great gatherings there the people stand. This, of course, increases 
the capacity of the hall, and also, in times of excitement, the difficulty 
of controlling the auditory. 



94 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

ject of its callers. He claimed that there was "a 
conflict of laws" between Missouri and Illinois ; 
compared the slaves to a menagerie, " with lions, 
tigers, a hyena and an elephant, a jackass or two, 
and monkeys in plenty," and likened Lovejoy to one 
who should " break the bars and let loose the caravan 
to prowl about the streets ;" talked of the rioters of 
Alton as akin to the " orderly mob" which threw the 
tea into Boston Harbor in 1773, and declared their 
victim " died as the fool dieth ;" and in direct and 
insulting allusion to Dr. Channing closed by assert- 
ing that a clergyman with a gun in his hand, or one 
'* mingling in the debates of a popular assembly, was 
marvellously out of place." ' 

When he retired Faneuil Hall rocked indeed, but 
not in the old-time way. Hands of devils were 
rocking it. Friends of law and order were aghast. 
The indifferent were drawn over by the infectious 
enthusiasm to the side of the apologist for murder, 
and joined Austin's myrmidons in their roar of 
triumph. The foes of freedom had captured the 
hall ! They were so sure of this that they did not 
care to precipitate a riot, but waited to vote down 
the resolutions and thus turn the protest into an in- 
dorsement. 

At this wild moment, under the very shadow of 
the impending catastrophe, Wendell Phillips, who 
was standing on the floor, a mere auditor, with no 
thought of speaking,' leaped upon the lectern and 



' Vide the Boston journals of December gth, 1837. 

^ Mr. Weld, usually the most accurate of men, thinks he did intend 
to speak, though, of course, unaware of the need of replying to Aus- 
tin. See his " Eulogy," p. 34. He is mistaken. The testimony is the 
other way. The speech itself is the proof, for it is throughout a reply 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 95 

confronted the raging multitude, himself an embodied 
Vesuvius. But the fire was as yet smothered, the 
lava did not at once begin to flow ; the eruption was 
in reserve. His easy attitude, his calm dignity, the 
classic beauty of his face, challenged attention and 
piqued curiosity. Suddenly the turbulence hushed 
itself into silence. Then that marvellous voice, 
sweet as a song, clear as a flute, was heard for the 
first time by a vast audience and completed the 
charm which his masterful bearing had begun to 
work. It was the opportunity of a lifetime. It 
meant renown or discomfiture, with a nation for the 
witness. Would, could this stripling of twenty-six 
lift himself to the level of the lofty occasion and 
dominate the scene? All fears were soon and hap- 
pily dispelled. Mr. Phillips, however, was too full 
of his subject to be self-conscious. He spoke not 
for fame, but for freedom. " My purpose," said he, 
in referring to the occasion, " was to secure the pas- 
sage of Dr. Channing's resolutions." He com- 
menced in that quiet, dulcet tone with which all 
America was erelong to become familiar : 

" Mr. Chairman : We have met for the freest discussion of 
these resolutions, and the events which gave rise to them (cries 
of ' Question !' ' Hear him !' ' Go on !' ' No gagging !' etc.). 
I hope I shall be permitted to express my surprise at the senti- 
ments of the last speaker — surprise not only at such sentiments 
from such a man, but at the applause they have received within 
these walls. A comparison has been drawn between the events 
of the Revolution and the tragedy at Alton. We have heard it 
asserted here, in Faneuil Hall, that Great Britain had a right to 
tax the Colonies, and we have heard the mob at Alton, the 



to Austin. Of course he had thought deeply on the subject, so that, 
while speaking extemporaneously, he spoke out of knowledge as well 
as out of conviction, 



96 WENDELL nilLLIPS. 

drunken murderers of Lovejoy, compared to those patriot fathers 
who threw the tea overboard ! {Great applause.') Fellow- 
citizens, is this Farveuil Hall doctrine ? (' No, no 1') The mob 
at Alton were met to wrest from a citizen his just rights — met 
to resist the laws. We have been told that our fathers did the 
same ; and the glorious mantle of Revolutionary precedent has 
been thrown over the mobs of our days. To make out their title 
to such defence, the gentleman says that the British Parliament 
had a right to tax these Colonies. It is manifest that, without 
this, his parallel falls to the ground ; for Lovejoy had stationed 
himself within constitutional bulwarks. He was not only de- 
fending the freedom of the press, but he was under his own roof, 
in arms, with the sanction of the civil authority. The men who 
assailed him went against and over the laws. The mob, as the 
gentleman terms it — mob, forsooth ! — certainly we sons of the 
tea-spillers are a marvellously patient generation ! — the ' orderly 
mob ' which assembled in the * Old South ' to destroy the tea were 
met to resist, not the laws, but illegal exactions. Shame on the 
American who calls the tea-tax and stamp-act laws ! Our 
fathers resisted, not the king's prerogative, but the king's usur- 
pation. To find any other account, you must read our Revolu- 
tionary history upside down. Our State archives are loaded 
with arguments of John Adams to prove taxes laid by the British 
Parliament unconstitutional — beyond its power. It was not till 
this was made out that the men of New England rushed to arms. 
The arguments of the Council Chamber and the House of Repre- 
sentatives preceded and sanctioned the contest. To draw the 
conduct of our ancestors into a precedent for mobs, for a right 
to resist laws we ourselves have enacted, is an insult to their 
memory. The difference between the excitement of those days 
and our own, which this gentleman in kindness to the latter has 
overlooked, is simply this : the men of that day went for the 
right, as secured by laws. They were the people rising to sus- 
tain the laws and constitution of the province. The rioters of 
our day go for their own wills, right or wrong. Sir, when I 
heard the gentleman lay down principles which place the mur- 
derers of Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy 
and Adams, I thought those pictured lips (pointing to the por- 
traits in the hall) would have broken into voice to rebuke the 
recreant American— the slanderer of the dead !'* 



I 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 97 

As Mr. Phillips hurled this thunderbolt at the At- 
torney-General, and accompanied it with an electric 
glance and gesture, the arches of Faneuil Hall echoed 
with successive thunder-claps of approval, which the 
partisans of Austin were too dazed to do more than 
attempt to resent. As the plaudits subsided, the 
waiting orator, standing there in the attitude of fiery 
readiness, followed his last sentence and climaxed it 
with this volcanic flame-burst : 

" The gentleman said he should sink into insignificance if he 
condescended to gainsay the principles of these resolutions^ 
For the sentiments he has uttered, on soil consecrated by the 
prayers of Puritans and the blood of patriots, the earth should 
have yawned and swallowed him up !" 

This was Vesuvius in full eruption, and as Pompeii 
was buried, so now the heaving earth seemed to 
swallow the patron of mobs and murderers. The 
scene beggars description. Men lost their reason. 
Enthusiasm became delirium. Anticipating defeat, 
as just before they had anticipated triumph, the 
riotous faction now attempted to precipitate vio- 
lence. They pushed and howled vainly ; for Mr. 
Phillips had mesmerized the mere spectators who had 
cheered Austin's sophisms into complete sympathy 
with himself, and holding them under his eye and 
voice would not let them go. Waiting again with 
that serene composure always so characteristic of 
his style, and as marked at the start as at the close 
of his career, he paused only long enough to obtain 
so much of silence as might float his tones to the ears 
of the throng, and felt that then his voice and per- 
suasions would enforce attention. In a moment 
those even, honeyed cadences once more filled the 
hall, and the crowd, entranced, bent with eageirness 



98 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

to hear. The gifted boy had conquered already, 
and from this point to the close he spoke without 
interruption, save such as punctuated .:is sentences 
with the approbation of the auditors. Having buried 
the Attorney-General out of sight, he proceeded to 
dissect his argument : 

" Allusion has been made to what lawyers understand very 
well — the ' conflict of laws.' We are told that nothing but the 
Mississippi River runs between St. Louis and Alton; and the 
conflict of laws somehow or other gives the citizens of the former 
a right to find fault with the defender of the press for publishing 
his opinions so near their limits. Will the gentleman venture 
that argument before lawyers ? How the laws of the two States 
could be said to come into conflict in such circumstances I ques- 
tion whether any lawyer in this audience can explain or under= 
stand. No matter whether the line that divides one sovereign 
State from another be an imaginary one or ocean wide, the 
moment you cross it the State you leave is blotted out of exist- 
ence, so far as you are concerned. The Czar might as well 
claim to control the deliberations of Faneuil Hall, as the laws 
of Missouri demand reverence, or the shadow of obedience, from 
an inhabitant of Illinois. 

" Sir, as I understand this affair, it was not an individual pro- 
tecting his property ; it was not one body of armed men assault- 
ing another, and making the streets of a peaceful city run blood 
with their contentions. It did not bring back the scenes in 
some old Italian cities, where family met family, and faction met 
faction, and mutually trampled the laws under foot. No ; the 
men in that house were regularly enrolled under the sanction 
of the mayor. There being no militia in Alton, about seventy 
men were enrolled with the approbation of the mayor. These 
relieved each other every other night. About thirty men were 
in arms on the night of the 6th, when the press was landed. 
The next evening it was not thought necessary to sumnion more 
than half that number ; among these was Lovejoy. It was, 
therefore, you perceive, sir, the police of the city resisting rioters 
— civil government breasting itself to the shock of lawless men. 
Here is no question about the right of self-defence. It is, in 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 99 

fact, simply this : Has tlie civil magistrate a right to put down 
a riot ? Some persons seem to imagine that anarchy existed at 
Alton from the commencement of these disputes. Not at all. 
No one of us,' says an eye-witness and a comrade of Lovejoy, 
' has taken up arms during these disturbances but at the com- 
mand of the mayor.' Anarchy did not settle down on that de- 
voted city till Lovejoy breathed his last. Till then the law, 
represented in his person, sustained itself against its foes. 
When he fell, civil authority was trampled under foot. He had 
* planted himself on his constitutional rights' — appealed to the 
laws — claimed the protection of the civil authority— taken refuge 
under ' the broad shield of the Constitution. When through 
that he was pierced and fell, he fell but one sufferer in a com- 
mon catastrophe.' He took refuge under the banner of liberty — 
amid its folds ; and when he fell, its glorious stars and stripes, 
the emblem of free institutions, around which cluster so many 
heart-stirring memories, were blotted out in the martyr's blood. 

" If, sir, I had adopted what are called peace principles, I 
might lament the circumstances of this case. But all you who 
believe, as I do, in the right and duty of magistrates to execute 
the laws, join with me and brand as base hypocrisy the conduct 
of those who assemble year after year on the Fourth of July, to 
fight over the battles of the Revolution, and yet * damn with 
faint praise,' or load with obloquy, the memory of this man, 
who shed his blood in defence of life, liberty, property, and the 
freedom of the press ! 

" Imprudent to defend the liberty of the press ! Why ? Be- 
cause the defence was unsuccessful 1 Does success gild crime 
into patriotism, and want of it change heroic self-devotion to 
imprudence ? Was Hampden imprudent when he drew the 
sword and threw away the scabbard ? Yet he, judged by that 
single hour, was unsuccessful.- After a short exile, the race he 
hated sat again upon the throne. 

" Imagine yourself present when the first news of Bunker Hill 
battle reached a New England town. The tale would have run 
thus : * The patriots are routed ; the redcoats victorious ; War- 
ren lies dead upon the field.' With what scorn would that Tory 
have been received, who should have charged Warren with im- 
prudence ! who should have said that, bred as a physician, he 
was ' out of place ' in the battle, and * died a3 the fool dieth ! * 



lOO WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

{Great applause.) How would the intimation have been re- 
ceived, that Warren and his associates should have waited a 
better time ? But, if success be indeed the only criterion of 
prudence, Respite finem — wait till the end. 

*' Presumptuous to assert the freedom of the press on Ameri- 
can ground ! Is the assertion of such freedom before the age ? 
So much before the age as to leave one no right to make it be- 
cause it displeases the community ? Who invents this libel on 
his country ? It is this very thing which entitles Lovejoy to 
greater praise, the disputed right which provoked the Revo- 
lution—taxation without representation — is far beneath that for 
which he died. (Here there was a strong and general expres- 
sion of disapprobation.) One word, gentlemen. As much as 
thought is better than money ^ so much is the cause in which 
Lovejoy died nobler than a mere question of taxes. James Otis 
thundered in this hall when the king did but touch \{\'s, pocket. 
Imagine, if you can, his indignant eloquence had England 
offered to put a gag upon his lips. {Great applause.) 

" The question that stirred the Revolution touched our civil 
interests. This concerns us not only as citizens, but as im- 
mortal beings. Wrapped up in its fate, saved or lost with it, 
are not only the voice of the statesman, but the instructions of 
the pulpit and the progress of our faith. 

" The clergy ' marvellously out of place ' where free speech 
is battled for — liberty of speech on national sins ? Does the 
gentleman remember that freedom to preach was first gained, 
dragging in its train freedom to print ? I thank the clergy here 
present, as I reverence their predecessors, who did not so far 
forget their country in their immediate profession as to deem it 
duty to separate themselves from the struggle of '76 — the May- 
hews and the Coopers — who remembered they were citizens 
before they were clergymen." , 

Mr. Phillips closed with these words : 

" I am glad, sir, to see this crowded house. It is good for us 
to be here. When liberty is in danger, Faneuil Hall has the 
right, it is her duty, to strike the key-note for these United 
States. I am glad, lor one reason, that remarks such as those 
to which I have alluded have been uttered here. The passage 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. lOI 

of these resolutions, in spite of this opposition, led by the At- 
torney-General of the commonwealth, will show more clearly, 
more decisively, the deep indignation with which Boston regards 
this outrage." 

When the whirlwind of applause which followed 
the orator's conclusion had rolled away, the chair- 
man put the resolutions, and they were carried by 
an overwhelming vote.' Thus was defeat turned 
into victory by the genius of Phillips, as, years after- 
ward, that other defeat at Winchester was turned 
into victory by the magnetism of Sheridan. 

Where now and what was the Attorney-General ? 
Nowhere and nothing. Transfixed by forked-light- 
ning, sic exit Austin. Thus ma}' all the foes of lib- 
erty be buried in shame and sepulchred in ignominy ! 

Oliver Johnson, who was one of Mr. Phillips's 
auditors that morning, remarks : 

" I had heard him once before (in his first Anti^ 
Slavery speech at Lynn '), as a few others in that 
great meeting probably had, and my expectations 
were high ; but he transcended them all and took the 
audience by storm. Never before, I venture to say, 
did the walls of the old ' Cradle of Liberty ' echo to a 
finer strain of eloquence. It was a speech to which 
not even the completest report could do justice, for 
such a report could not bring the scene and the 
manner of the speaker vividly before the reader. It 
was before the days of phonography, and the report- 
er caught only a pale reflection of what fell from 
the orator's lips." ^ 



* So wrote Mr. Garrison to G. W. Benson on the following day. 
Mr. G. was present as an auditor. Vide his Life by his sons, vol. 
ii., p. 189, note. 

^ Ante, p. 81. 2 " Garrison and his Times," p. 229. 



102 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Dr. Channing, too, then and ever afterward testi- 
fied to his wonder and dehght, and referred espe- 
cially to the power which PhilUps's voice exercised ; 
catching and enchaining the riotous throng from the 
moment its dehcious cadences were heard.' 

When we remember all the circumstances — the 
momentous occurrence that led to the meeting, the 
public excitement, the mixed character of the throng 
in Faneuil Hall, the ability and reputation of the 
Attorney-General, who no doubt bellowed forth the 
real sentiments of the majority, the presence of his 
partisans there in great numbers for the purpose of 
breaking up or breaking down the protest, the 3^outh 
of the orator and his lack of experience in handling 
a mob — certainly the success of Wendell Phillips that 
day was marvellous. It revealed him to himself as 
well as to the world and fixed his destiny. The 
orator sprang into being in the full possession, as it 
should seem, of all his powers — maturity in youth 
and experience ahead of knowledge — like Minerva 
from the brain of Jove. Not in American history is 
there such another precocious and dramatic orator- 
ical debut. 

From that hour Faneuil Hall was to be identified 
with Wendell Phillips, as until that hour it had been 
identified with James Otis. The eloquence of Otis 
blossomed in the Declaration of Independence. The 
eloquence of Phillips was to flower in the Proclama- 
tion of Emancipation. 



' " The Golden Age of American Oratory." By E. G. Parker. 
Notice of Wendell Phillips. 



BOOK II. 



NOON. 

1838-1865, 



I 



I. 

THE ABOLITIONISTS — MEN AND MEASURES. 

The decree of social outlawry pronounced in blue- 
blood circles against Wendell Phillips when he be- 
came an Abolitionist, was confirmed and stamped 
with the unchangeableness of the laws of the Medes 
and Persians after the speech on Lovejoy's murder 
in Faneuil Hall. That was death ; this was burial. 
The young man, however, refused to concede his 
decease, and certainly proved to be a lively corpse. 
More correctly, he did recognize his death to Fashion 
and rejoiced in his new life for Humanity. 

Upon looking around he found himself in congenial 
company — few but fit. If the Abohtionists were not 
received in my lady's boudoir, they were eagerl}^ 
welcomed by those ready to perish. If commerce 
averted its countenance from them and withheld its 
golden recompense, the great Proprietor of heaven 
and earth adopted them to be His heirs. If politics 
scorned and spat upon them in the 'thirties, the 
sycophant made haste to crown and then to kneel 
before them in the 'sixties. Great is Success, and 
Fashion is its prophet ! Bless you, there is all the 
difference in the world between the John Wesley of 
1729, whom the graceless scholars of Oxford nick- 
named " methodist," and the pontifex maximus of 
the largest of the Christian sects in the nineteenth 
century. And there is the same difference between 



I06 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

those whom 1837 pilloried as the "friends of the 
niggers," and 1863 garlanded as the " saviours of a 
race," and 1865 as the reconstructors of the conti- 
nent. But our business at present is with the 
" friends of the niggers," not with the honored, be- 
cause successful philanthropists. 

Who were some of these Abolitionists ? Chief 
among them was William Lloyd Garrison, least 
pliable, most persistent of men. His head was worth 
more than Georgia offered for it or than the South 
Avas able to give. A phrenologist would have pro- 
nounced firmness the ruling elder in the circuit of 
his faculties. His manner, however, not as comba- 
tive as his nature, was composed and conciliatory. 
Of all phases of the question to which he had dedi- 
cated his life, he was a walking encyclopaedia. As 
an organizer he was unexcelled. And he had self- 
fed fire enough to thaw the ice of the moral North 
Pole, and melt out and down a passage to the tem- 
perate zone — to the conscience and heart of America. 
Such was the director of the Abolition Societas de 
Propaganda Fide : not less protean than his namesake 
at Rome. 

Around Mr. Garrison were grouped those who 
had already heard and heeded his bugle-call. There 
was the Rev. Samuel J. May, the St. John of the 
Garrisonians,' whose character is painted in that 
allusion to the apostle who learned his creed as he 
leaned on the breast of Jesus, a Unitarian clergyman 
who held and taught that man was more than money, 
and that Christianity was more important than creed. 



^ Mr. May was born, 1797 ; died 1871. Long settled in Syracuse, 
N. Y. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. lO^ 

There was John G. Whittier, the poet of freedom, 
with the bashful manner of a girl and the moral cour- 
age of a hero, his eyes flashing out from beneath a 
beetling crag of brow, sure to attract attention and 
as sure to decline it. There was Charles C. Bur- 
leigh, most unique of men, in person outre y with long, 
flowing hair, unshorn beard, and " high- water" 
pantaloons that dangled above his ankles — an appear- 
ance which' made him the inevitable laughing-stock 
of every audience until he began to speak ; then his 
Niagara rush and weight of utterance changed ridi- 
cule into admiration and carried opposition over to 
agreement. His life was an apostleship.' 

" Called in his youth to sound and grauge 
The moral lapse of his race and age, 
And, sharp as truth, the contrast draw 
Of human frailty and perfect law ; 
Possessed by the one dread thought that lent 
Its goad to his fiery temperament, 
Up and down the world he went, 
A John the Baptist, crying — Repent !" ^ 

There was Francis Jackson, a successful merchant, 
who sold his goods, not his principles, and who at 
the time of the Garrison mob had made his own 
house a sanctuary of liberty by opening it to the 
heroines whom Mayor Lyman had driven out of 
doors ^ — a man unpretentious but magnificent, rich 
but philanthropic, a knight-errant of trade, and, hke 
Bayard, sans peiir et sans reproche. At his side stood 
another merchant, Henry G. Chapman (the cousin 



^ Mr. Burleigh was born in Connecticut, in 1801 ; died at Florence, 
Mass., in 1878. 
2 Whittier's " Preacher." Diamond edition, p. 306. 
^ Vide " Wendell Phillips's Speeches," p. 219. 



Io8 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

of Mrs. Wendell Phillips), who moved in the best 
society, dwelt in a ceiled house, and fared sumptu- 
ously every day ; but who accepted the condemna- 
tion of his pastor, Dr. Channing, and of his business 
and social intimates, in order to become the treasurer 
of theA bolition cause — a moneyed man, but not a man 
of money. There were Ellis Gray Loring and Sam- 
uel E. Sewall, a brace of conscientious lawyers, fitted 
by legal attainments and judicial spirit to adorn the 
bench, but who read over the entrance to their Anti- 
Slavery career Dante's motto of the Inferno : 

" All hope abandon, ye who enter here !" 

and entered notwithstanding. The brace of mer- 
chants and the brace of law3xrs were matched by a 
brace of Congregational ministers, the Rev. Moses 
Thatcher and the Rev. Amos Phelps, able and elo- 
quent men, who felt for the slaves as though bound 
with them, and the latter of whom gave to the 
Abolitionists their earliest definition of slavery, viz., 
" Slavery is the holding of a human being as prop- 
erty." ' 

Nor was Mr. Garrison the only editor in the 
humanitarian coterie. At his side stood David Lee 
Child, a strong writer, a Harvard graduate, yet an 
honest man. Even professional scholarship was 
represented in this contracted circle, notably repre- 
sented by Charles T. C. Pollen, a liberty-loving Ger- 
man, who occupied the chair of German Language 
and Literature at Cambridge, which he was soon 
driven to vacate because of his connection with the 
Abolitionists. Thus was the son of Luther, who 



I 



Garrison and his Times," p. 73. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. IO9 

came to America in the same ship which bore Lafa- 
yette to these shores in 1823, requited for his passion 
on behalf of freedom.' 

The tragedy at Alton brought into the Anti- 
Slavery camp another recruit destined to become a 
might}^ man of valor — Edmund Quincy. His pres- 
ence was especially welcome to Mr. Phillips, for he 
came out of the same social set/ snapped the same 
green withes of aristocracy, and showed the same 
heroic self-denial. He was the litterateur of Abolition, 
and wrote with the pen of Junius. Having gotten 
his eyes open he kept them open until he saw the 
glorious end.^ 

The women in those days, as in all days, averaged 
better than the men, and justified the saying of 
Luther : " I have oftentimes noted when women 
espouse a cause they are far more fervent in faith, 
they hold to it more stiff and fast than men do ; as we 
see in the loving Magdalen, who was more hearty 
and bold than Peter himself." ^ So here there was 
no dearth of heroines. Each one wears the nimbus 
with which the old painters crowned the Virgin. 
Some of them we shall have occasion to mention as 
we proceed. At the outset two stood forth in beau- 
tiful relief like the figures of saints in a cathedral. 
One of these was Lydia Maria Child, the wife of 
Editor David Lee Child, the earhest and most popu- 



' May's " Anti-Slavery Recollections," p. 254. See also the " Life 
of Follen." He perished in the fire which destroyed the steamboat 
Lexington in the passage from New York to Stonington, January 
13th, 1840. 

'^ See p. 39 of this volume. 

^ Mr, Quincy was four years older than Mr. Phillips. He died in 
1877. 

^ " Table Talk," Bohn's edition, p. 367. 



no WENDELL PHILLITS. 

]ar of our female editors and authors ; ' ' than whom, 
remarks tlie NortJi American Review, in an issue of 
the period, " few women, if any, have done more or 
better things in literature, whether in its lighter or 
graver departments." wShe did not hesitate to sacri- 
fice her literary prospects on the altar of Abolition, 
and at the cost of fame and fortune lent her wizzard 
pen to the slave until he ceased to need it.' Mrs. 
Child made the splendid beginning of an Anti-Slavery 
literature in her famous " Appeal in Favor of that 
Class of Americans called Africans," a book fit to 

"... Create a soul 
Under the ribs of death ;"^ 

and which worked that miracle in thousands of cases, 
Wendell Phillips being one.^ 

The other of these bas-relief women was Maria 
Weston Chapman, the wife of Henry G. Chapman, 
and the cousin by marriage of Mrs. Wendell Phil- 
lips. Of Mayflower lineage, dowered with woman's 
chief charm and snare — beauty — to which she added 
a rare intellect, which Europe had cultivated, she 
was the idol of the most exclusive circles^nd seemed 
certain to be a queen of fashion. When she espoused 
the righteous, but unpopular cause of the negro great 
was the amazement, unutterable the disgust of Bos- 
ton. She at once made herself the alter ego of Mr. 
Garrison. 



' This noble and gifted woman died in 1880. 

'^ Milton's " Samson Agonistes," line 560. 

^ Mr. Phillips had his attention called to slavery by the " Appeal," 
before he openly espoused the Anti-Slavery cause. This was one of 
his avvakeners ; so says Mrs. Alford in her sketch of Mrs, Phillips, 
Vide p. 4, 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. Ill 

As a writer she was only less gifted than Mrs. 
Child, and knowing the value of printers' ink, she 
published her thoughts in prose and verse. Wise in 
counsel and fertile in resources, she suggested ways 
and means in the darkest hour^. Her graces of 
person and gifts of mind were exerted in unfriendly 
coteries to conciliate and attract, and always with a 
single object — the downfall of slaver3\ Lowell has 
hvmned it all in five lines of poetic photography : 

" A noble woman, brave and apt, 
Cumas's sibyl not more rapt, 
Who might, with those fair tresses shorn, 
The Maid of Orleans' casque have worn — 
Herself the Joan of our Arc." ^ 

Surely, let Mrs. Grundy sneer as she might, Wen- 
dell Phillips, among these high souls, was not in the 
way greatly to miss estranged associates, who cut his 
acquaintance when he avowed himself the ' ' friend of 
niggers. ' ' Such companionship was a moral tonic. 
Such a life-purpose fired his soul with generous as 
pirations. The service of God through the uplifting 
of man raised him above the frivolities which make 
the main business of what calls itself Society, freed 
him from the thraldom of petty pursuits, yardstick 
measurements and the selfish dicker in cotton and 
corn, and flashed a divine meaning into human life. 
As an intellectual stimulus and spiritual safeguard 
his new career was worth all he paid for it. Men 
unconsciously aggrandize themselves when they 
imitate the Christ. 

How did this magnificent band, smaller than Gid- 
eon's army after it had been twice weeded, opposed 



' Mrs. Chapman died in 1SS5, 



112 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

to every element that was potent in America, to 
State and Church, to trade and society, to law and 
learning, to politics and art, propose to fight their 
battle ? They deliberately chose the Christian meth- 
ods. They distinctly disavowed carnal weapons and 
adopted moral suasion. They believed in reason, 
not passion ; in conscience, not force ; in ideas, not 
bullets. In the preamble to the constitution of the 
" New England Anti-Slavery Society" we find a 
statement of their principles : 

" We, the undersigned, hold that every person, of full age 
and sane mind, has a right to immediate freedom from personal 
bondage of whatsoever kind unless imposed by the sentence of 
the law for the commission of some crime. We hold that man 
cannot, consistently with reason, religion, and the eternal and 
immutable principles of justice, be the property of man. We 
hold that whoever retains his fellowman in bondage is guilty of 
a grievous wrong. We hold that mere difference of complexion 
is no reason why any man should be deprived of any of his 
natural rights, or subjected to any political disability. While 
we advance these opinions as the principles on which we intend 
to act, we declare that we will not operate on the existing rela- 
tions of society by other than peaceful and lawful means, and 
that we will give no countenance to violence or insurrection." ^ 

In the constitution of the '' American Anti-Slavery 
Society" these principles reappear in another form : 

"Article Two.— The object of this Society is the entire 
abolition of slavery in the United States. While it admits that 
each State in which slavery exists has, by the Constitution of the 
United States, the exclusive right to legislate in regard to its 
abolition in said State, it shall aim to convince all our fellow- 
citizens, by arguments addressed to their understandings and 
consciences, that slave-holding is a heinous crime in the sight 
of God, and that the duty, safety, and the best interests of all 



1 " 



Garrison and his Times," p 85. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. II3 

concerned require its immediate abandonment, without expatria- 
tion. Tiie Society will also endeavor, in a constitutional way, 
to influence Congress to put an end to the domestic slave trade, 
and to abolish slavery in all those portions of our common 
country which come under its control, especially in the District 
of Columbia — and lii>:ewise to prevent the extension of it to any 
State that may be hereafter admitted to the Union. ^ 

" Article Three. — This Society shall aim to elevate the 
character and the condition of the people of color, by encourag- 
ing their intellectual, moral, and religious improvement, and by 
removing public prejudice, that thus they may, according to 
their intellectual and moral worth, share an equality with the 
whites of civil and religious privileges ; but this Society will 
never, in any way, countenance the oppressed in vindicating 
their rights by resorting to physical force." ^ 

These were the earliest organizations. The great 
family of similar bodies domiciled throughout the 
free States reproduced these distinctive features of 
their parents as one after the other they were born. 

Mr. Garrison was a non-resistant, as were many 
of his followers. Mr. Phillips was not. But he 
fully adopted the measures in vogue when he came 
into the movement, and his efforts for a quarter of a 
century were exerted persistently and consistently 
on the moral suasion platform, though when the war 
broke out he gave it a hearty support — all the more 
hearty because of his long moral advocacy. 

Throughout this period the indictment of the 
Abolitionists had two contradictory counts. The 
slave-holders charged them with attempting to stir 
insurrection. Those who professed to abhor slavery, 
but who excused themselves from moving against it, 
accused them of impracticability. They answered 



' The ultimate purpose of the Free Soil and Republican parties. 
"^ " William Lloyd Garrison," by his sons, vol. i., p. 414. 



114 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

the charge of sedition by pointing to their standards 
of faith and practice. They responded to the ac- 
cusation of impracticability by proving that they were 
acting under the inspiration of Jesus Christ, and that 
they were, therefore, just as practical as the genius 
of His system would permit them to be. Did the 
Master preach immediate repentance ? So did they 
preach immediate emancipation. Was it within the 
power of a sinner to let go of his sin ? So was it 
within the power of a slave-holder to free his slaves. 

Moreover, as a further and triumphant reply to 
this assertion that they were impracticables, they 
called attention to the recent success of the English 
Abolitionists, who, on the same basis, had assailed 
and at length abolished slavery in the British West 
Indies.^ Why was not what had been practicable 
there, after years of agitation, equally practicable 
here ? Were Clarkson and Wilberforce, Buxton and 
Macaulay, Brougham and O'Connell hotheads? 
Then they, too, were content to be known as fanat- 
ics. Was there any peculiarity in the American 
moral climate which could hocus-pocus success in 
Palestine and triumph in England and the West In- 
dies into failure in the United States ? Why should 
what was acknowledged to be statesmanship on one 
side of the Atlantic become fanaticism on this side ? 
The Abolitionists waited long for an answer to these 
questions. Those who survive are waiting still. 

Not at once did Mr. Phillips devote his whole 
time and attention to Abolition. He attended to 
what law business the Faneuil Hall meeting had left 
in his hands. Now, too, he commenced his wonder- 



* On August ist, 1834, 800,000 slaves were set free. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. II5 

ful career as a public lecturer. From the moment 
he entered this field he was in continental demand. 
His literary productions, especially, were eagerly 
sought ; each new lecture was an event. These he 
valued as so many introductions to audiences which 
Avould not permit him to discuss slavery at first, but 
which, once under the spell of the magician, gave 
him carte blanche. Hence he kept constantly on hand 
an assortment of lectures on science, of which he 
was fond, and biography (a department in which he 
was an adept), and through these won a hearing for 
the cause which lay nearest his heart. It was in this 
way that he was led to prepare his famous lecture 
on " The Lost Arts." ^ He began to deliver it in 
1838. Thenceforth and for forty-five years he gave 
it again and again — over two thousand times in all — 
to fascinated crowds from Portland to St. Louis, 
until it netted him $150,000, the largest sum ever 
earned by a similar production.^ 

The boards of the Lyceum he continued to tread 
through life. But by and by he made the Lyceum 
an Anti-Slavery rostrum, and the movement ab- 
sorbed him. 



' This is given in full in the Appendix. 
^ So he informed the writer in 1883. 



II 



II. 

A CONUNDRUM. 

Woman is a conundrum which man is unwilling to 
give up. We write her with an interrogation mark. 
Mrs. Mar}' A. Livermore used to deliver an enter- 
taining lecture entitled " What shall we do with 
our Daughters?" 'Tis a serious question even now. 
Fifty years ago it was a hopeless question. It might 
have been reversed and put in this form : " What 
will our daughters do with us ?" 

Woman has always been the power behind the 
throne. There has been the difficulty. She has 
been behind it when she should have been on it. 
Hers has been power without the sobering sense of 
responsibility. She has had her way ; but in order 
to get it she has been obliged to cheat her male be- 
longings into thinking they were having theirs. It 
has been finesse against force — the fox against the 
lion. In such a role there is no dignity and little 
credit. We have shut woman up in a doll-world, 
and then complained of her frivolity. ** Why are 
you women such fools?" queried a crusty benedict. 
" I suppose," was the quick reply of the bright 
woman he addressed, "it is because God made us 
to match the men !" 

As soon as the various Anti-Slavery societies, 
which now began to abound, w^ere organized, they 
were confronted by a perplexity nearerr and more 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. II7 

exacting than slavery itself — woman ! The ladies 
composed two thirds of the membership and did 
three fourths of the work. Yet when it came to the 
election of officers and the shaping of policies they 
had no vote and no voice. Some of them resented 
this. They insisted upon recognition as an act of 
justice to themselves on the part of societies pledged 
to win justice for others. They wanted to help in the 
choice of their leaders. They desired to share in 
the maturing of measures and methods. A few went 
further — they wished to go out and tell the com- 
munity, as only women could, about the horrors of 
slavery, and to do this with the sanction and under 
the seal of one and another of the Anti-Slavery 
societies. 

Well, these demands made a great ado. Oriental 
notions then prevailed regarding woman's seclusion. 
The Shah of Persia would not have been more 
shocked by a protest on the part of one of his wives 
against plural marriage than were some of the Aboli- 
tionists by such unheard-of claims. They were pro- 
nounced ** unwomanly" and "unsexing." Nowa- 
days it is laughable. But let us remember that those 
ladies by their persistence made the happy social 
change which gives us the right to laugh. They 
■fought their battle bravely. They acknowledged 
their sex to be miraculously able, but said they did 
not go so far as to hold that one whom God had 
made a woman could make herself anything else. 
They begged to be informed why it was en regie for 
a woman to act on the stage and sing in public, but 
unwomanly for her to sit with men on committees 
and talk to a mixed company from the platform ? 
Yet many of those who held up their hands in hor- 



IlS WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

ror at the thought of this proposed outrage upon 
propriety, paid fabulous prices to hear Jenny Lind 
sing and to see Rachel act. 

It is a suggestive fact that an effort at reform in 
one direction surely discloses the need of reform in 
other directions, and at the same time educates 
some who have acted in that one line to move in 
those other lines of amelioration. Thus it was that 
the crusade against slavery inevitably led first to the 
movement in behalf of woman and then to the move- 
ment in behalf of labor. For numbers of the reform- 
ers, their attention having been called to it, saw at 
once the reasonableness of the women's claim, and 
conceded it, Mr. Phillips among the foremost. In 
the matter of rights he could see no difference be- 
tween a coat and a petticoat. Nor was he much dis- 
turbed when certain of the brethren assured him 
that the Bible had closed woman's mouth — in con- 
ventions — with a seal which bore the imprint of St. 
Paul. That bugaboo had been paraded so often in 
the case of slavery, through allusions to Abraham 
and Onesimus, it could no longer scare. " Since 
woman," said Mr. Phillips, " is interested equally 
Avith man in righting the wrongs of slavery ; since 
among the blacks she suffers vitally as wife and 
mother, as daughter and sister, just as he does as hus- 
band and father, as son and brother ; Avh}^ is she not 
entitled to utter her indignation anywhere, every- 
where, and most of all in Anti-Slavery committee- 
rooms and upon Anti-Flavery platforms ?" ' 

This burning issue did not come up as an abstract 
question, but in an actual case. A couple of heroic 



^ So he writes in a letter to Arthur Tappan, in 1838 (ms.). 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. II9 

women, the sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimke, 
daughters of a celebrated jurist of South Carolina, 
Judge John F. Grimke, no longer able to endure the 
horrors they witnessed in the house of bondage, 
shook off the dust from their feet against their native 
State and made a home in Philadelphia. They had 
been members of the Episcopal communion. Find- 
ing it a hot-bed of Pro- Slavery sentiment, they came 
out ao^ain and united with the orthodox Quakers. 
Soon they began a house-to-house canvass among 
their own sex in the interest of Abolition. Their 
words were so incisive, their impeachment of slavery 
was^ so tremendous, their story of its immoralities 
was so pathetic, that the women who heard them 
were deeply moved. Presently the men, hearing of 
their successful advocacy, began to clamor for ad- 
mission to these conferences, for women have no 
monopoly of curiosity. The surest way to attract a 
man anywhither is to bar him out — especially if 
women are barred in ! Erelong, therefore, there 
was a demand for the public appearance of the Misses 
Grimke. Being Quakeresses they had no objection 
to a promiscuous audience. Accordingly, under 
the auspices of the various Anti-Slavery societies, 
they began to discuss slavery in public ; always to 
the conviction and conversion of those who listened. 
Indeed, they proved to be the most effective of 
speakers.' 

Marking this, the conservatives made haste to do 
two things : First, to shut in their faces the doors of 
every church which they controlled — the vast ma- 
jority ; and, secondly, to fulminate against them a 



' Johnson's " Garrison and his Times," p. 261. 



I20 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Protestant " bull," in which the faithful were ex- 
horted not to countenance such caricatures upon 
true womanhood. 

This "bull," which appeared in the summer of 
1837/ called forth from Whittier one of his most 
pungent 13'rics : 

" So this is all — the utmost reach 

Of priestly power the mind to fetter ! 
When laymen think, when women preach, 

A 'War of Words ' — a pastoral letter. 
But ye who scorn the thrilling tale 

Of Carolina's high-souled daughters, 
Which echoes here the mournful wail 

Of sorrow from Edisto's waters, , 

Close while ye may the public ear. 

With malice vex, with slander wound them ; 
The pure and good shall throng to hear, 

And tried and manly hearts surround them." ^ 

These last lines were prophetic. For the measures 
taken to suppress only enlarged their meetings.' 
Other women began to exhort. More and more 
were the Anti-Slavery societies called upon to ac- 
cord to the women the privileges enjoyed by men. 
More and more did Mr. Phillips insist that this be 
done ; in which Mr. Garrison and many others joined 
him. The debate was hot. In various instances the 
rights demanded were accorded. 



^ This was the utterance of the General Association of the Massa- 
chusetts orthodox churches, in session at Brookfield, which met June 
27th. The paper was drawn up by the Rev. Dr. Nehemiah Adams, 
of Boston, who soon earned for himself, by a book called " A South- 
side View of Slavery," the sobriquet of " Southside Adams." 

' " Whittier's Poems, 'The Pastoral Letter.' " Diamond edition, 
p. 70. 

^ Angelina Grimk6 was married to Theodore D. Weld in 1838. 
She died some years ago. Sarah died earlier. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 121 

Reference is here made to this issue and to Mr. 
Phillips's position on it, because it belongs here in 
point of time ; because soon afterward it divided the 
Abolitionists into two camps ; and because in Eng- 
land and at home our knight-errant of freedom was 
to break many a gallant lance as the champion of the 
ladies. 



III. 

"VALE." 

Boston has always been celebrated as an intellec- 
tual headquarters. It was markedly so when Wen- 
dell Phillips was young. There was then a circle of 
wide-awakes meeting at irregular intervals under 
the name of " The Friends," usually in the palatial 
apartments of Mr. Jonathan PhilUps, a wealthy 
bachelor, who resided at the Tremont House, that 
relative of the orator who had presided over the 
gathering in Faneuil Hall where he spoke, and, like 
Byron, awoke the next morning to find himself 
famous. In this conclave the wits of the day were 
wont to discuss living questions of all sorts.' Here 
Dr. Channing might surely be found, and Bronson 
Alcott, a gentle philosopher with an orthodox train- 
ing and a heterodox slant, and Theodore Parker, 
already known as an heresiarch, whose acquaintance 
Mr. Phillips thus early made at one of these sym- 
posiums, for the young lawyer was another of the 
" Friends." What hairs did they split ! What fine 
distinctions between tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee ! 
Mr. Phillips used to refer to it all as a rare school of 
dialectics. No doubt he often took occasion to re- 
mind the circle that inequity should properly be 
spelled iniquity. 



* " Life of Theodore Parker," by O. B. Frothinghara, p. 96* 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 1 23 

Early in 1839 ^^ was made General Agent of the 
Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, of which Fran- 
cis Jackson was the President and William Lloyd 
Garrison was the Corresponding Secretary. Into 
this work Mr. Phillips threw himself with the ardor 
of an enthusiast and the success of a man of affairs. 
He organized a school-house campaign, held meet- 
ings from the sands of Cape Cod to the hills of Berk- 
shire, made every cross-roads a hustings, created lec- 
turers by the score, and set on two feet a protean 
discussion. He spoke himself here, there, and yon- 
der, and became ubiquitous. He hung out a new 
lantern and started another Paul Revere's ride, to 
give warning of a more dangerous invasion than the 
old one by the redcoats. Soon he had the State 
agog, this aristocrat turned democrat who was not 
yet thirty ! ^ 

To the perturbations of his official position (which 
he held without pecuniary recompense)' hfe added, 
in these early years of his married life, an increasing 
anxiety for his wife. She grew frail apace. The 
cradle of their happiness seemed destined to be its 
grave. As a dernier ressort the nonplussed physi- 
cians advised a European trip. Mr. Phillips's family 
eagerly coincided, hoping that time and distance 
might cure him of his " fanaticism" and her of her 
ailment. The thought of withdrawal, even for a 
time, was a cross to both. Their hearts were at one 
in the Anti-Slavery crusade. But health and strength 
might come from the tonic of new scenes and experi- 
ences, and so long years of usefulness. The unpalata- 
ble medicine was worth a trial. They decided to obey. 



^ Vide Liberator^ vol. ix., p. 95. ^ Jb, 



124 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

At this moment the annual meeting of the New 
England Anti-Slavery Society was held, the place 
being Boston, and the date May 30th, 1839. The 
Convention unanimously adopted a series of resolu- 
tions referring in warm terms to Mr. Phillips's unself- 
ish labors, and recommending him to the hospitality 
and confidence of Abolitionists on the other side of 
the water, as "a devoted, uncompromising and 
eloquent friend of the slave." ' 

After listening to this tribute he ascended the plat- 
form, evidently much affected, and was received 
with round on round of hearty plaudits. Speaking 
with emotion, he said : 

'* I thank you for your vote. I feel my responsibility as your 
representative abroad. I trust in the opinion of the civilized 
world whose thunder tones are beginning even now to sweep 
over the Atlantic, in the power of Christendom, awake, united, 
indignant, speaking in the voice of our fatherland and echoed 
by gallant and beautiful France. England has solved the ' vexed 
question,' and proved that emancipation is both safe and expe- 
dient, and has written that demonstration in letters emblazoned 
in lines of light 

* On the blue vault of heaven, 
'Twixt Orion and the Pleiades.' 

" The Germans call enthusiasm Schwdrmeret, as if its origin 
were amid a swarm or assembly of people. Let us rather keep 
to the old Greek definition — the God within us — and go hence 
to work as earnestly as we have felt in this crowded Conven- 
tion." 2 

As Mr. Phillips resumed his seat the convention 
broke forth in a tornado of cheers. 

Soon after this valedictory address the managers of 



^ Liberator^ vol. ix., 2d week in June. ' Jb, 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 1 25 

the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society bade him an 
affectionate and appreciative farewell in an open 
letter, which recited in detail his birth, sacrifices, 
talents, and services, and commended him to the 
friends of humanity everywhere. These references 
were followed by a remarkable summing- up of the 
Anti-Slavery progress within a decade : 

" Ten years ago a solitary individual stood up as 
the advocate of immediate and unconditional eman- 
cipation. Now, that individual sees about him hun- 
dreds of thousands of persons, of both sexes, mem- 
bers of every sect and party, from the most elevated 
to the humblest rank in life. In 1829 not an Anti- 
Slavery society of a genuine stamp was in exist- 
ence. In 1839 there are nearly two thousand such 
societies swarming and multiplying in all parts of 
the free States. In 1829 there was but one Anti- 
Slavery periodical in the land. In 1839 there are 
fourteen. In 1829 there was scarcely a newspaper 
of any religious or political party which was willing 
to disturb the * delicate ' question of slavery. In 
1839 there are multitudes of journals that either 
openly advocate the doctrine of immediate and un- 
conditional emancipation, or permit its free discus- 
sion in their columns. Then, scarcely a church made 
slave-holding a bar to communion. Now, multitudes 
refuse to hear a slave-holder preach, or to recognize 
one as a brother. Then, no one petitioned Congress 
to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. 
Now, in one day, a single member of the House of 
Representatives (John Quincy Adams) has presented 
one hundred and seventy-six such petitions in de- 
tail ; while not less than seven hundred thousand 
persons have memorialized Congress on that and 



126 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

kindred subjects. . . . Tell our British brethren that 
the apathy which once brooded over the land like 
the spell of death is broken forever." * 

Accompanied by these good wishes and with such 
credentials, the Phillipses said good-by to their 
country with tolerable composure, and set sail from 
New York for London in the packet " Wellington" on 
June 6th, 1839/ ^^ steam, no electric lights, no 
hotels afloat at that time. But the " Wellington" was 
the best ship up to date on the vast ferry between 
the continents. Hence our travellers esteemed 
themselves fortunate in securing a passage on her ; 
and were so, for she carried them safely, and con- 
quered Neptune as her namesake did Napoleon. 



^Liberator, vol. ix., p. 95. * Jb^ 



IV. 

SCENES AND EXPERIENCES IN EUROPE. 

The two Bostonians reached London in July. 
Here they tarried only long enough to take tlieir 
sea-legs off and put their land-legs on. Their pur- 
pose was to pass the approaching winter in Rome 
and to return to Great Britain for the summer of 
1840. Hence they did not regret the hasty exit, 
but realized the need of " movin' on," like poor Joe 
in Dickens's story, since the long journey on the 
Continent must be made by easy stages and in the 
clumsy diligence, which represented the rapid transit 
of the period. In September they were in Lyons, 
whither they went from Paris en route for Italy. 
Before the snows fell they were in the Eternal City, 
whence Mr. Phillips wrote, under date of January 
5th, 1840, to a relative at home : 

** It seems useless to catalogue interesting objects, so numer- 
ous are they here ; yet catalogues are more eloquent than de- 
scriptions. The Caesars' palace speaks for itself. To stand in 
the Pantheon, on which Paul's eyes may have rested, what needs 
one more to feel ? We have been up Trajan's Pillar by the very 
steps the old Roman feet once trod ; rode over the pavement on 
which Constantine entered in triumph ; seen the Colosseum 
(I by moonlight, and heard the dog bay, though not ' beyond 
the Tiber ' that I know of) ; lost ourselves in that'little world of 
dazzling, bewildering beauty, the Vatican, where the Laocoon 
breathes in never-ending agony, and eternal triumph beams 
from the brow of the Apollo. We have dived into Titus's baths 



128 WENDELL I'lilLLlPS. 

and the half-buried ruins of Nero's ' golden house, where the 
frescoes are blooming and fresh after eighteen hundred years." ' 

Amid these scenes they learned that a World's 
Anti-Slavery Convention had been called to meet in 
London, June 12th, 1840 ; that the Massachusetts and 
Pennsylvania societies had accredited a number of 
well-known men and women as delegates, themselves 
included, and that they were expected to report for 
duty there and then. Returning to England they 
duly reached the metropolis. Their letters of intro- 
duction were an '^ open sesame." They met all the 
high mightinesses of the da}' — the Duchess of Sunder- 
land, a great beauty and next in rank to the Queen, 
her daughter, afterward the Duchess of xA.rgyle, 
Lady Byron, wife of the poet. Lord Brougham, and, 
best of all, Daniel O'Connell, the Irish liberator, 
between whom and Mr. Phillips a great friendship 
sprang up. Now, too, the PhiUipses first met George 
Thompson, the orator of the West Indian emancipa- 
tion, who had been publicly crowned in the House 
of Commons as the foremost and most eloquent 
pleader for negro liberty in England," but whom 
America had scorned and sought to crucify, when, 
on the invitation of Mr. Garrison, he had visited us 
in 1834.^ The meeting between these two was cor- 
dial. Mr. Thompson was a Scotsman, a resident of 
Edinburgh, a wit and a genius, now in the prime 
of life. ** Ann and I," said Mr. Phillips, " went 
laughing through England and Scotland with this 
prince of raconteurs. One of his stories, especially. 



^ " Memorial of Ann Phillips," by Mrs. Alford, p. 7. 

^ " Garrison and his Times," p. 134. 

^ lb. Also " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. i., pp. 432-67. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 1 29 

always convulsed us, told as it was with inimitable 
drollery : The story of an East Indian Rajah who 
had been persuaded to take a seidlitz-powder by 
some wag, and to take it in sections, swallowing first 
the contents of the blue paper and instantly after- 
ward the contents of the white, so that the efferves- 
cence took place internally, throwing the astounded 
Rajah into volcanic eruption, with his mouth and 
nostrils for craters." ^ 

In attendance upon the convention were a couple 
of Abolitionists to whom they were instantly drawn 
as by a kinship of soul. The first of these was Miss 
Elizabeth Pease, a young Quaker lady, of Darling- 
ton, England, a lovely character, in whose society 
they spent many delightful days, and with whom 
they continued an intimate correspondence for years 
after their return to America.' The other was 
Richard D. Webb, of Dublin, a rich Quaker printer, 
one of the most genial and witty of men, whose Irish 
blood showed itself, spite of his Quakerism, in an 
unconscious and irrepressible love for a " scrim- 
mage ;" as is evident from the fact that he struck 
off on his presses an edition of non-resistant pam- 
phlets, " just to raise a little bit of a row !" ' 

The World's Convention opened on Friday, June 
12th, 1840, in Freemason's Hall, with five hundred 
delegates on the floor,^ many of them Americans. 
In the preceding 3^ear the British and Foreign Anti- 
Slavery Society had been organized by an eminent 



' Letter from Mr. Phillips to a relative (ms.). 
"^ " Memorial of Ann Phillips," by Mrs. Alford, p. 7. 
^ Quoted from a letter written by Richard D. Webb to George 
Thompson, in "William Lloyd Garrison," vol. ii., p. 403. 
"* '* William Lloyd Garrison," by his sons, vol. ii., p. 367, 



130 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

member of tlic Society of Friends, Joseph Stiir^c.' 
This body had issued a call for a General Confereice 
and addressed it to " Friends of the slave of every 
nation and of every clime." ^ Accordingly^ the vari- 
ous American societies met and appointed delegates. 
Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, in agreement wi:h 
their recent rules, had, as we have stated, sent mixed 
delegations, among the men, William Lloyd Garri- 
son, Wendell Phillips, and William Adam, Professor 
of Oriental Languages at LLarvard College ; among 
the women, Harriet >Lirtincau (who, though an 
Englishwoman and a non-resident of America, was 
an honorary member of the Massachusetts Anti- 
Slavery Society, and already on the ground), Mrs. 
Wendell Phillips, Mrs. Henry G. Chapman, and 
Lucretia Mott, by odds the ablest and most distin- 
guished Quakeress in the world. 

These ladies were now in London, and they re- 
quested Wendell Phillips to present their credentials. 
Upon doing so, a day or two before the first session 
of the Convention, he was waved off to the Execu- 
tive Committee of the British and Foreign Society, 
which had assumed authoritv to determine who 
were eligible for membership. This cabal refused 
to admit women. From their star-chamber decision, 
Mr. Phillips appealed to the convention itself. As 
soon, therefore, as the venerable Thomas Clarkson, 
the father of the West India emancipation, who pre- 
sided, had concluded his address of greeting, the 
young American rose and offered this resolution : 

" That a committee of five be appointed to prepare a correct 



' "William Lloyd Garrison," by his sons, vol. ii,, p, 352. 
^ lb. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. I3I 

list of the members of this Convention, with instruction to in- 
clude in such list all persons bearing credentials from any Anti- 
Slavery society." 

The resolution stirred a hubbub. It shifted the 
question as to who should and who should not be 
considered as delegates from the committee-room to 
the Convention, and bluntly put the decision as to 
whether it was a self-constituting- body where it be- 
longed, with the bod}'. When quiet was restored 
Mr. Phillips, calm, debonair, in London as in Boston, 
proceeded to argue the case : 

" When the call reached America, we found that it was an 
invitation to the ' friends of the slaves of every nation and of 
every clime.' Massachusetts has for several years acted on the 
principle of admitting women to an equal seat with men in the 
deliberate bodies of Anti-Slavery societies. When the Massa- 
chusetts Anti-Slavery Society received that paper, it interpreted 
it, as was its duty, in its broadest and most liberal sense. We 
stand here in consequence of your invitation ; and, knowing our 
custom, as it must be presumed you did, we had a right to inter- 
pret ' friends of the slaves ' to include women as well as men. 
In such circumstances we do not think it just or equitable to 
that State, nor to America in general, that after the trouble, the 
sacrifice, the self-devotion, of a part of those who left their 
families and kindred and occupations in their own land, to come 
three thousand miles to attend this World's Convention, they 
should be refused a place in its deliberations." * 

English habits and customs felt outraged. Women 
sitting with men in a convention — shocking ! They 
might sit together at home, in church, at theatres, 
in the ball-room, at a concert, in the public convey- 
ances, anywhere, everywhere, except in a conven- 
tion. In the interest of decency and in the interest 



1 " The Life and Times of Wendell Phillips," by George L. 
Austin, p. 97, 



132 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

of harmony, the New Englander was besought on 
all sides to withdraw his motion. He rose again and 
said : 

** I would merely ask whether any man can suppose that the 
delegates from Massachusetts or Pennsylvania can take upon 
their shoulders the responsibility of withdrawing that list of 
delegates from your table, which their constituents told them 
to place there, and whom they sanctioned as their fit repre- 
sentatives, because this Convention tells us that it is not ready 
to meet the ridicule of the morning newspapers, and to stand 
up against the customs of England ? In America we listen to 
no such arguments. If we had done so, we had never been 
here as Abolitionists. It is the custom there not to admit colored 
men into respectable society ; and we have been told again and 
again that we are outraging the decencies of humanity when we 
permit colored men to sit by our side. When we have sub- 
mitted to brickbats and the tar-tub and feathers in New England 
rather than yield to the custom prevalent there of not admitting 
colored brethren into our friendship, shall we yield to parallel 
custom or prejudice against women in Old England ? 

" We cannot yield this question if we would, for it is a matter 
of conscience. But we would not yield it on the ground of ex- 
pediency. In doing so, we should feel that we were striking 
off the right arm of our enterprise. We could not go back to 
America to ask for any aid from the women of Massachusetts if 
we had deserted them when they chose to send out their own 
sisters as their representatives here ; we could not go back to 
Massachusetts and assert our unchangeableness of spirit on the 
question. We have argued it over and over again, and decided 
it time after time, in every society in the land, in favor of the 
women. We have not changed by crossing the water. We 
stand here the advocates of the same principle that we contend 
for in America. We think it right for women to sit by our side 
there and we think it right for them to do the same here. We 
ask the Convention to admit them ; if they do not choose to 
grant it, the responsibility rests on their shoulders. Massa- 
chusetts cannot turn aside or succumb to any prejudices or cus- 
toms, even in the land she looks upon with so much reverence 
as the land of Wilberforce, of Clarkson, and of O'Ccnnell. It 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. I33 

is a matter of conscience, and British virtue ought not to ask us 
to yield."! 

The result was that, after a gallant struggle, the 
ladies were denied admission to the floor as delegates 
and shunted off into the galleries as spectators." 
Negroes were admitted ; but women, gracious, no ! 
It was when Mr. Phillips left her to conduct this 
case that Mrs. Phillips addressed him in the oft- 
quoted words : 

" Wendell, don't shilly-shally." ' 

Well, he did not. And though immediately de- 
feated, he opened then and there the broadest and 
profoundest of all agitations, that which contem- 
plates the emancipation of the larger and better half 
of the human race. The World's Convention straight- 
w^ay shrank into a conclave of men — a sex conven- 
tion. It was its ironical fate to stand rather as a 
landmark in the history of woman's rights than in 
that of Abolition. * 

This action set tongues a- wagging from Land's 
End to John o'Groat's house ; yes, and across the 
continent of America. It was a better advertise- 
ment for fair play than a dozen unchallenged admis- 
sions would have been. 

Unfortunately Mr. Garrison, detained by storms 
on the ocean, did not reach London until the Con- 
vention was nearing its end. When he arrived he 
refused to enter the body, and took his place yonder 
in the galleries among the excluded and disfranchised 



' *' Life and Times of Wendell Phillips." by George L. Austin, 
pp. 98, 99. 

2 " Life and Letters of J. and L. Mott," tn loco. 

2 " Memorial of Ann Phillips," p. 8 

■* ** William Lloyd Garrison," vol. ii., p. 381. 



134 WENDELL PniLLIPS. 

delegates. In a letter to the Liberator he gives his 
reason : 

" The Convention had but three days more to sit, and there- 
fore we would not disturb it by renewing- the agitation of the 
subject already decided, but so decided as to prevent us also 
from entering without renewing its discussion. Another reason 
was that, after having called every friend of the oppressed from 
all parts of the globe, the Convention was not an open one, but 
resolved itself into a delet^ated body. Another was that, being 
a delegated body, the delegates were not all received. Why, 
which of the delegates had the right to reject the rest ? As well 
might the women have conspired to vote out the men, as the 
men have undertaken to exclude the women." ' 

The action of the World's Convention was pitiful ; 
all the more inexcusable because it \vas, in its incep- 
tion, and largely in its management, a Quaker con- 
ference, and, as everybody knows, the Quakers have 
given to women the largest recognition. Now they 
poured contempt upon their own traditions and bor- 
rowed the manners of the " world's people." 

Two names stand out in honorable prominence 
upon the record. They are the names of two Roman 
Catholics — one the foremost priest of his age, the 
other the most illustrious layman in the Pope's com- 
munion. Father Mathew, the great apostle of tem- 
perance, who revolutionized Ireland on that ques- 
tion, expressed his deep regret at the exclusion of 
the women delegates.^ And Daniel O'Connell, in 
a letter to Lucretia Mott, dated London, June 20th, 
Avrote : 

" I readily comply with your request to give my opinion as to 
the propriety of the admission of the female delegates into 
the Convention. 



* Vide Liberator, vol. x., p. 165. * 73., p. 139. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. I35 

'* I should premise by avowing, that my first impression was 
strong against that admission ; and I believe I declared that 
opinion in private conversation. But when I was called upon 
by you to give my personal decision on the subject I felt it my 
duty to investigate the grounds of the opinion I had formed ; 
and upon that investigation I easily discovered that it was 
founded on no better grounds than an apprehension of the 
ridicule it might excite, if the Convention were to do what is so 
unusual in England — to admit women to an equal share and 
right of discussion. I also, without difficulty, recognized that 
this was an unworthy, and, indeed, a cowardly motive, and I 
easily overcame its influence. 

" My mature consideration of the entire subject convinces me 
of the right of the female delegates to take their seats in the Con- 
vention, and of the injustice of excluding them. I do not care 
to add, that I deem it also impolitic ; because-, that exclusion 
being unjust, it ought not to have taken place even if it could 
also be politic. 

" I have a consciousness that I have not done my duty in not 
sooner urging these considerations on the Convention. My ex- 
cuse is, that I was unavoidably absent during the discussion of 
the subject !"^ 

For their part in the Convention, the controlling 
spirits sent Messrs. Phillips and Garrison to Coven- 
try. When a monster meeting- was held in Exeter 
Hall, as a grand finale, neither of them was invited to 
speak, though one was the originator and the other 
was the orator par excellence of the Abolition move- 
ment in America. Two lesser lights represented 
this country on the platform that night ; while 
O'Connell spoke, as only he could, for Europe, 
gathering into one tremendous thunder-tone the old 
world's rebuke of the recreant Republic. This was 



^ Liberator, vol. x., p. 119. Compare "William Lloyd Garrison," 
vol, ii., p. 382. 



136 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

the occasion when the eloquent Irishman uttered the 
sentence which PhilUps never tired of repeating : 

" I send my voice across the Atlantic, careering 
like the thunder-storm against the breeze, to tell the 
slave-holder of the Carolinas that God's thunder- 
bolts are hot, and to remind the bondman that the 
dawn of his redemption is already breaking !" ' 

In commenting upon this, Mr. Phillips said : 
** You. seemed to hear the tones come echoing back 
to London from the Rocky Mountains." ^ 

He went with Garrison soon after to call on 
O'Connell. The Irishman had just begun to agitate 
for the repeal of the union with Engkmd. He was 
to make a speech that night in the House of Com- 
mons on that very issue. The two friends intruded 
with fear and trembling, expecting to find him in the 
throes of preparation. On the contrary, he was 
stretched upon a sofa enjoying one of Charles Dick- 
ens's novels ! ^ After the manner of great minds he 
sought recreation on the eve of conflict and left his 
opponents to do the agony. 

The Convention adjourned on June 23d.'' There- 
upon social enjoyments, which the session had inter* 
rupted, resumed their sway. It was here, there, or 
yonder from daybreak to midnight, an unceasing 
round of fetes and pleasures. Into them Mrs. Phil- 
lips entered as deeply as her strength would allow, 



^ See Phillips's lecture on O'Connell in the Appendix of this volume. 

2 lb. 

^ For one interesting parallel case the reader is referred to Edward 
Everett's account of Webster's manner the night previous to his 
crushing response to Hayne. Vide Everett's " Orations and 
Speeches," vol, iv., p. 205. 

* " V/illiam Lloyd Garrison," vol. ii., d. 373. note. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. I37 

and often when she was spent she urged her devoted 
" better three-quarters," as she persisted in calling 
him, to go and represent the remaining quarter, 
finding it difficult, however, to enforce obedience in 
this from the usually submissive husband. What 
were scenes and experiences of gayety to him with 
her absent and in pain ? 

Finding that the social pace was harmful to her, 
and mindful of the purpose of their exile, he hurried 
off with her against the protests of his British friends, 
and in July, 1840, set out, by way of Belgium and 
the Rhine, for Kissingen, in Bavaria, in the vain 
hope that the medicinal waters of the spa would 
prove beneficial. In a letter to Miss Elizabeth Pease, 
written from Kissingen, in August, he gives a hint 
of what they saw : 

'* To Americans it was especially pleasant to see at Frankfort 
the oldest printed Bible in the world and two pairs of Luther's 
shoes, which Ann would not quit sight of till I had mustered 
German enough to ask the man to let the ' little girl ' feel of 
them. So, after being permitted to hold the great man's slippers 
in her own hands, the man watching to see she did not vanish 
with them, the ' delegate from Massachusetts ' was content to 
leave the room. But she'll speak for herself." 

Then, in the same letter, Mrs. Phillips adds : 

'* We are settled down in this quiet little village, and strange 
indeed it is after the busy London hours. How much we en- 
joyed there 1 Even I have a world to look back upon, though 
I was able to take but little share in the rich feast of heart and 
mind. It was the remark of the great physician Hunter that he 
should be happy through eternity if God would but let him muse 
upon all he had seen and learned in this world. So what a 
never-ending store of recollections you will have in this visit 
from those you have so long known (though not face to face). 
How hallowed will be to you the memory of those hours of com- 



138 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

munion with such a being as Garrison I I thought you could 
not but love him." ' 

As Kissingen did not answer their expectations, 
they next tried Brlickenau, another Bavarian spa. 
Meeting with continued disappointment, they de- 
voted the autumn, which was a delightful one, to 
leisurely travel in Switzerland and Northern Italy. 
Leaving Germany via Heidelberg, they visited in 
succession the Falls of the Rhine, Zurich, Lucerne, 
Berne, Interlaken ("over that gem of a lake by 
Thun"), the Staubbach and Wengern Alps, and Lau- 
sanne, and in October they crossed the Simplon to 
Milan. ^ On reaching Florence, which they did in 
November, Mr. Phillips wrote : 

" After a fortnight of glorious weather, we came hither by 
Bologna, that jewel of a city, . . . for she admits women to be 
professors in her university, her gallery guards their paintings, 
her palaces boast their sculptures. I gloried in standing beside 
a woman-professor's monument set up side by side with that of 
the illustrious Galvani."^ 

At the same time he w^rote an interesting descrip- 
tive letter to his wife's cousin and his own devoted 
friend. Miss Mary Grew, of Philadelphia, who had 
been among the rejected delegates at the World's 
Convention, one of the most gifted and indefatigable 
of the Anti-Slaverv band : 

" Florence, Italy, November 19, 1S40. 
" Dear Cousin : I have remembered well my promise to 
write to you, but a thousand things have pushed the August 
which should have been into the November which stares at me 
rather reproachfully from my dating. This, however, is not the 
only plan for this second year abroad which has not come to 



* " Memorial of Ann Phillips," p. 9. * /^., p. 10. ^ lb. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. I39 

reality ; and, though we are very happy, and mean to be under 
all circumstances, still, when we look back on all the things we 
meant to do — sights to see, scenes to explore, curiosities to gloat 
over, we feel something as Johnson did when, after printing the 
glorious plan he had at first drawn for his dictionary, he ludi- 
crously says, ' Such were the dreams of a poet destined to awake 
a lexicographer.' 

" We had dreamed of seeing all the Alps, Chamouni, climb- 
ing hundreds of hills, roaming over the Simplon and theSpliigen 
and lakes innumerable, being drenched in the mist of every 
waterfall which boasts a name, and topping off with Venice — 
half-Eastern, half-Gothic, and all romance. But such were the 
dreams of a traveller destined to awake an invalid.^ I'll not 
stop to tell you of the London days after you left us. You shall 
go on board with us and sail over that rough, chopping Channel 
to Ostend ; passing mournfully, because too rapidly, by those 
rich old places full of pictures and churches and town halls 
(these last the scenes of the first struggle of municipal freedom) ; 
i.e., by Liege, Brussels, Namur, Aix-la-Chapelle, we come to 
spend Sunday at Cologne. I do not deem myself ill employed 
in spending some few hours in wandering around that miracle of 
art, that half-finished cathedral, number one in Gothic architec- 
ture the world over ; and staring rather stupidly at that romance- 
known and queer old chapel which boasts of having the skulls 
of the three kings who saluted Mary and the Child. I would I 
could stop to catalogue the strange list of relics they pretend to 
show in Catholic shrines, from the Saviour's blood downward. 
It is certainly shocking, the manner in which they have ran- 
sacked the Gospel and marked the slightest things — and some- 
times ludicrous, though the blind devotion which they inspire 
can only and always be melancholy. But, if you trust them, you 
can see almost any article named in Holy Writ, and sometimes, 
unfortunately, two of the same things. 

'* The next day we launched on the Rhine — river ever- vary- 
ing, always grand and noble ; while we just set foot for the 
night at Coblenz. Come with me, and I'll show you the house 
where Metternich was born ; and in that little church yonder 
the sons of Charlemagne met to divide his empire. 



* This refers to his wiic. 



140 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

*' In the Frankfort library, they show you the first printed 
Bible, 1450 or 1455, by Gutenberg, at Mayence (no date in it, 
though), on paper which is as rare as many of these earliest prints 
were on parchment — perhaps the oldest printing in the world, 
and seen almost in its cradle. We have seen here, at Florence, 
many ancient stamps for pottery, etc., made of one piece of iron, 
and with over thirty letters cut upon them, just like a stereotype 
plate, to stamp the maker's name on bread or burned ware. 
Strange that they were thus in sight of this glorious invention — 
only one step, and to take that step cost fifteen hundred years ! 

" Look here, and you may take into your hands the very shoes 
Luther wore (always provided the librarian holds on to the other 
end to see you do not vanish with them), just such sandals as 
one sees now every day on the monks' feet in Italy. 'Tis 
strange how alike the human mind is, all nations and both 
sexes through. I have found one vein of defect running through 
Catholicism into Quakerism. For instance, the monks dress in 
the fashion of five hundred years ago ; these shoes might be 
mated in any Italian town now, and could have been in the days 
of Petrarch. 

" Yet St. Benedict, when he laid down the rules of his order, 
commanded only plainness, and cautioned against singularity. 
How like broad-brim and straight collars ! 

" But a truce to prosing. Like the Scotsman * back agen,' 
we came to Frankfort, made acquaintance with Mr. Wood- 
bridge — a very pleasant one— he was very civil and kind, as 
Americans always ought to be to each other in strange coun- 
tries ; and then down to Switzerland, to Schaffhausen, with its 
falls, the boast of Europe ; so-so to an American, though, to be 
sure, they are beautiful. But when I see falls here, I always 
think of the story of a cockney who was visiting in the country, 
and on being requested to observe a fine river exclaimed, * Yes, 
fine, very fine for a country river.' So it is with the European 
falls ; not so, though, with the beautiful shoot of the Staubbach, 
which falls some eight or nine hundred feet into a fearful valley 
hemmed in by precipices of black rock on both sides thousands 
of feet high ; on one side the falls, and on the other, peering 
over the lowering black rocks, you see the glistening white of 
the eternal snow of the glaciers reflecting the sunset. Oh, 
those glaciers 1 surely next to the ocean they are the sublimest 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. I4I 

natural objects in the world. Perhaps I ought to except Niagara, 
but am not sure. Winter — not in the lap of spring, but of sum- 
mer ; roses at your feet, blue-cold ice, dazzling snow over your 
head ; and, far up in the sky, towering above the barren piles of 
rock, perfect wildernesses of snow — heaps on heaps. 

" At Milan we received a letter from Elizabeth Pease. She is 
a noble woman, worth coming to a ' World's Convention,' and 
not finding one, to make her acquaintance. 

" Remember us and pray for us, that we may be kept forever 
watching the will of God and doing it with hearts pure and 
raised above every worldly motive or temptation. 

" Yours most truly, 

'* Wendell Phillips." 

Wendell Phillips In Florence ! The swift radical 
for once at rest among" conservatives ! The archi- 
tect of the future in the city of the past ! The con- 
trast was sharp. Yet there was in him a singular 
combination of radicalism and conservatism. Men- 
tally he believed in and worked for a nobler to-mor- 
row. In sentiment he was reminiscent, and delighted 
to think and speak of the fated yesterday. Hence, 
he found Florence a place of enchantments. 

Such landscapes as might be viewed 

*' At evening from the top of Fesole, 
Or in Val d'Arno;" 

such dark piles of mediaeval architecture as frowned 
down upon him on every side, a romance in each 
stone ; such museums filled with the medals and 
coins of every age, and populous with the breathing 
marbles and the inspired canvas of the master artists ; 
such libraries stored with the choicest texts of ancient 
letters ; such gardens — rose, orange, pomegran- 
ate, myrtle — bewitching the air with fragrance—^ 



142 WENDELL I'HILLirS. 

where else would a scholar so willingly live or 
die?' 

Many and lingering were his visits to the Church 
of Santa Croce ; to the house of Michel Angelo ; to 
the stone where Dante stood to gaze on the Cam- 
panile. Nor did this latest struggler for truth omit 
to go where Milton, also a wanderer amid these 
kindling scenes, went, to the house where Galileo 
lived and died — lialf-vilLi and half-prison, where the 
English poet (another of those " of whom the world 
was not worthy") found the great Italian, who first 
beheld the heavens through a telescope and saw 
Venus crescent like the moon, grown old and blind, 
and held a " prisoner to the Inquisition for thinking 
on astronomy otherwise than as the Dominican and 
Franciscan licensers thought." '' 

From Florence the Phillipses turned with a sigh 
of regret and sought Leghorn for the sea-breezes. 
Here they welcomed the birth of the year 1841.' 
Here, too, they learned of another birth, that of a 
3'oung son of Mr. Garrison, away off in Boston, 
whom the parents had honored one of the wanderers 
b}' naming Wendell Phillips.'' Writing from Leg- 
horn in recognition of it, he sa3"s to a relative : 

What shall I say of William Lloyd Garrison's 
touching mark of kindly feeling ? I ask you to thank 



' These points are variously touched in letters which he wrote and 
which we thus summarize. 

^ " Milton's Prose Works," vol. i., p. 313. 

^ " Memorial of Ann Phillips," p. 10. 

"* This gentleman has reflected credit upon his name. He was 
educated (by his namesake) at Harvard College, and has been for 
years prominent and useful in connection with the New York press ; 
and latterly has given to the world a voluminous, record of his father's 
life and work, aided by a brother. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. I43 

him for this new token of his love and to pet the 
little one until I return to do it !" ^ 

Three months later the travellers reached Naples, 
ascended Vesuvius, wandered through the once- 
buried Pompeii and Herculaneum, " adored the 
bay," and laughed at the lazy lazzaroni as they 
sunned themselves at full length on the sidewalks. 
On April 12th Mr. F'hillips wrote to Mr. Garrison, 
with Naples for a writing-desk. 

His letter is so characteristic and reveals his artis- 
tic and humanitarian instincts — two selves in one — so 
remarkably, that we must quote some portions of 
It : 

" 'Tis a melancholy tour, this through Europe ; and I do not 
understand how any one can return from it without being, in 
Coleridge's phrase, ' a sadder and a wiser man.' Every reflect- 
ing mind must be struck at home with the many social evils 
which prevail ; but the most careless eye cannot avoid seeing 
the powerful contrasts which sadden one here at every step ; 
wealth beyond that of fairy tales, and poverty bare and starved 
at its side ; refinement face to face with barbarism ; cultiva- 
tion, which hardly finds room to be, crowded out on all sides by 
such debasement. . . . Europe is the treasure-house of rich 
memories, with every city a shrine. Mayence, the mother of' 
printing and free trade ; Amalfi, with her Pandects, the foun- 
tain of law — her compass of commerce— her Masaniello of 
popular freedom ; Naples, with her buried satellite of Pom- 
peii ; Florence, with her galaxy of genius ; Rome, whose 
name is at once history and description, must ever be tho 
' Meccas of the mind.' One must see them to realize the bound- 
less wealth, the refinement of art, the luxury, to which the an- 
cients had attained. The modern world deems itself rich when 
it gathers up only the fragments. 

" But all the fascina.tions of art and the luxuries of modern 
civilization are no balance to the misery which bad laws and 



* "William Lloyd Garrison," vol. ii., p. 413, noi^. 



144 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

bad religion alike entail on the bulk of the people. The Apollo 
himself cannot dazzle one blind to the rags and want which sur- 
round him. Nature is not wholly beautiful. For even when 
she marries a matchless sky to her Bay of Naples the impression 
is saddened by the presence of degraded and suffering humanity. 
When you meet in the same street a man encompassed with all 
the equipage of wealth and the beggar on whose brow disease 
and starvation have written his title to your pity, the question is 
involuntary, Is this a Christian city .'' To my mind the answer 
is, No. In our own country the same contrasts exist, but they 
are not yet so sharply drawn as here. I hope the discussion of 
the question of property will not cease until the Church is con- 
vinced that, from Christian lips oivnersJiip means responsibz'h'ly 
for the right use of what God has given ; that the title of a 
needy brother is as sacred as the owner's own, and infringed 
upon, too, whenever that owner allows the siren voice of his 
own tastes to drown the cry of another's necessities. . . . 

" The moral stagnation here only makes us value more highly 
the stirring arena at home. None know what it is to live till 
they redeem life from monotony by sacrifice. There is more 
happiness in one such hour than in dwelling forever with the 
beautiful and grand which Angelo's chisel has shaped and vital- 
ized from the ' marble chaos,' or the pencil of Raphael has given 
to immortality. . . . 

** Nothing bnngs home so vividly to Ann as the sight of an 
occasional colored man in the street ; and so you see we are 
ready to return to our posts in nothing changed. ... In one 
way, I have learned to value my absence. I have found diffi- 
culty in answering others — however clear my own mind might 
be — when charged with taking steps which the sober judgment 
of old age would regret, with being hurried recklessly forward 
by the enthusiasm of the moment and the excitement of heated 
meetings. I am glad, therefore, to have had this space aside, 
this opportunity of holding up our cause, with all its bearings 
and incidents, calmly before my mind — of having distance of 
place perform, as far as possible, the part of distance of years 
— of being able to look back from other scenes and studies upon 
the course we have taken the last few years. Having done so, 
I rejoice now to say, that every hour of such thought convinces 
me, more and more, of the overwhelmirig claims our cause has 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. I45 

on the lifelong devotion of each of us — of the rightfulness and 
expediency of every step we have taken ; and I hope to return 
to my place prepared to urge its claims with more earnestness, 
and to stand fearlessly by it without a doubt of its success. 

"Paul's 'appeal to Csesar ' brought him into this Bay of 
Naples, and he must have seen all its fair shores and jutting 
headlands covered with baths and villas, imperial palaces and 
temples of the gods. A prisoner of a despised race, he stood in 
the presence of the pomp and luxury of the Roman people. Even 
amid their ruins, I could not but realize how strong the faith of 
the Apostle to believe that the message he bore would triumph 
alike over their power and their religion. Struggling against 
priests and people may we cherish a like faith." ' 

The travellers returned to England by way of Pans 
(another city which charmed them both — a second 
visit), and went thence again to London, where they 
spent the last fortnight in June with Elizabeth 
Pease.'' Mr. Phillips found his friend George 
Thompson busily engaged in organizing a British- 
India agency for the cultivation of cotton, the object 
being to compete with the South in the markets of 
the world, in the hope of superseding slave labor in 
the production and sale of that staple. He wrote 
and published an open letter to Mr. Thompson, from 
which we quote : 

" How shall we address that large class of men to whom 
dollars are always a weightier consideration than duties, prices 
current stronger argument than proofs of Holy Writ ? Our 
appeal has been entreaty ; for the times in America are those 
' pursy times ' when, 

*• * Virtue itself of Vice must pardon beg, 

Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.* 

" But from India a voice comes clothed with the omnipotence 



^ Published in Liberator, vol. xi., p. 87. 
* *' Memorial of Ann Phillips," p. 10. 



146 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

of self-interest ; and the wisdom which might have been sh'ghted 
from the pulpit, will be to such men oracular from the market- 
place. Gladly will we make a pilgrimage and bow with more 
than Eastern devotion on the banks of the Ganges, if his holy 
waters shall be able to wear away the fetters of the slave. God 
speed the progress of your society ! May it soon find in its 
ranks the whole phalanx of scarred and veteran Abolitionists — 
no single divided effort, but a united one to grapple with the 
wealth, influence, and power embattled against you ! Is it not 
Schiller who says, ' Divide the thunder into single tones, and it 
becomes a lullaby for children ; but pour it forth in one quick 
peal, and the royal sound shall shake the heavens ' ? So may it 
be with you ! And God grant that, without waiting for the 
United States to be consistent, before we are dust, the jubilee of 
emancipated millions may reach us from Mexico to the Potomac, 
and from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains." ' 

No lasting good resulted from the British-India 
endeavor, which enlisted the co-operating efforts of 
American Abolitionists,^ though for a space it threw 
the Pro-Slavery interest into spasms of apprehen- 
sion.' 

After an absence of a little more than two years 
the Phillipses embarked from Liverpool for home on 
July 4th, 1841/ crossing by steamer, then thought 
hazardous, but taken, notwithstanding, by these 
friends of progress. Unhappily their chief purpose 
was not achieved, the wife returning as she had de- 
parted, a chronic sufferer. But they had seen and 



} FeoV ** Wendell Phillips and his Times/* by George L. Austin, 
pp. 103, 104. 

^ Compare a letter written by Wijliam Lloyd Garrison to Joseph 
Pease (brother of Elizabeth), of Darlington, England, on the same sub- 
ject, in " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. ii., pp. 391-94. 

^ " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. ii., p. 393, note. 

* " Memorial of Ann Phillips/' p. 10 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. I47 

felt much, storing a wealth of new emotions and 
bearing back a mass of classic spoil as the criteria of 
endless comparison and illustration. In so far as the 
completion of his outfit as a reformer and orator is 
concerned, Wendell PhiU.ps could not have spent 
those years more admirably. 



NO. 26 ESSEX STREET. 

The Phillipses reached Boston about the middle 
of July.' Their return was commemorated by a 
formal reception and collation, at which the entire 
Abolitionist community was present, with the grate- 
ful colored people in the role of host. Slavery and 
salads were discussed with equal gusto ; and the 
absentees were told how sadly they had been missed 
and how gladly they were welcomed back.^ Hav- 
ing been thus dined (but not wined), they went to 
the summer house of Mr. Phillips's mother in Nahant, 
a resort of the elite, within half an hour of town, 
where they passed two or three months, meanwhile 
arranging for a home of their very own. Mrs. Phil- 
lips paints their temporary refuge in one of the- rare 
letters traced by her pen, and addressed to her dear 
friend in England, Miss Elizabeth Pease : 

" Picture to yourself a great wooden house, with doors and 
blinds as usual, a mile from any other habitation, little grass 
and fewer trees, and you have * Phillips's Cliff.' The village of 
Nahant is about a mile from our house ; there Dame Fashion 
struts about three months of the summer, but we have the bless- 
ing of being out of her way and doing as v/e please. Here 
dwells, in summer, Wendell's mother ; one of her daughters, 
with five children, one side of the house, we with her in the 



' On the 17th. 

' " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. ill,, pp. 17, 18. See note also. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. I49 

Other. What with fifteen children and twenty grandchildren at 
intervals dropping in upon her, you see she is not alone. We 
rise about seven, breakfast at half-past. Wendell rows the boat 
for exercise ; bathes. I walk with him in the morning ; dine at 
two ; in the afternoon we ride with mother ; tea at seven ; in 
the evening we play chess or backgammon with her, or some 
brother or sister comes to pass the night, and we dispute away 
on the great questions. We are considered as heretics and 
almost infidels, but we pursue the even tenor of our way undis- 
turbed. Sometimes Wendell goes off abolitionizing for two or 
three days, but I remain on the ground." 

In October, '41, Mr. Phillips bought a tiny 
brick house of the English basement style on Essex 
Street, No. 26. Here the young couple decided to 
make their home. A dining-room and a kitchen on 
the ground floor ; a double parlor facing south (un- 
like the occupants), small, but suitable for a literary 
workshop, on the second floor ; front and back cham- 
bers (destined to form Mrs. Phillips's realm) on the 
third floor, with attic accommodations for the ser- 
vants ; such, in its ensemble, was the snuggery in 
which they were to reside for forty years. ^ It was 
as contracted as their sympathies were expanded. 
Knowing their own social gravitation, they selected 
this robin's nest precisely in order to make enter- 
tainment impossible. It was to be the abode of an 
invalid — a domestic sanitarium. 

The house stood, however, in the midst of the 
Anti- Slaver}^ colony — the Garrisons, the Chapmans, 
the Jacksons, the Lorings, within five minutes* 
walk.'^ It was a time when companionship was 
needed. Abolitionists might well huddle together 
for association, as the early settlers used to for pro- 
tection when the Indians were prowling about. 

* " Memorial of Ann Phillips," pp. lo, ii. * /^., p. l8. 



150 WENDELL PHTLLirS. 

Just as soon as they were settled Mr. Phillips 
wrote to Miss Pease : 

" November 25, 1841. 
*' I am writing in our own parlor — wish you were in it— on 
'Thanksgiving Day.* Did you ever hear of that name.'* 'Tis 
an old custom in New England, begun to thank God for a prov- 
idential arrival of food from the mother-country in sixteen hun- 
dred and odd year, and perpetuated now wherever a New Eng- 
lander dwells, some time in autumn, l)y the Governor's appoint- 
ment. All is hushed of business about me ; the devout pass the 
morning at church ; those who have wandered to other cities 
hurry back to worship to-day where their fathers knelt, and 
gather sons and grandsons, to the littlest prattler, under the old 
roof-tree to — shall I break the picture ?— cram as much turkey 
and plum-pudding as possible ; a sort of compromise by Puritan 
love of good eating for denying itself that ' wicked papistrie,' 
Christmas." 

A humorous account follows of the first trials of 
the young housekeepers with unpromising servants, 
and there is a mention of a friend's calling and find- 
ing him sawing a piece of soapstone : 

" I set to work to fix a chimney, having a great taste for car- 
pentering and mason-work. (When I set up for a gentleman, 
there was a good mechanic spoiled, Ann says.) . . . Ann's 
health is about the same. She gets tired out every day trying 
to oversee ' the keeping house,' as we Americans call it when 
two persons take more rooms than they need, buy double the 
things that they want, hire two or three others, just, for all the 
world, for the Vv'hole five to devote themselves to keeping the 
establishment in order. I long for the time when there'll be no 
need of sweeping and dusting, and when eating will be for- 
gotten." » 

A little later Mrs. Phillips gives the same friend 
" some little insight into indoor life at No. 26 Essex 
Street:" 



^ " Memorial of Ann Phillips," p. I3. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. I51 

" There is your Wendell seated in the arm-chair, lazy and 
easy as ever, perhaps a little fatter than when you saw him, still 
protesting how he was ruined by marrying. Your humble ser- 
vant looks like the Genius of Famine, as she always did, one of 
Pharaoh's lean kine. She laughs considerably, continues in 
health in the same naughty way, has been pretty well, for her, 
this winter. Now what do you think her life is ? Why, she 
strolls out a few steps occasionally, calling it a walk ; the rest 
of the time, from bed to sofa, from sofa to rocking-chair ; reads, 
generally, the Standard and Liberator, and that is pretty much 
all the literature her aching head will allow her to peruse ; 
rarely writes a letter, sees no company, makes no calls, looks 
forward to spring and birds, when she will be a little freer ; is 
cross very often, pleasant at other times, loves her dear L— and 
thinks a great deal of her ; and now you have Ann Phillips. 

" Now I'll take up another strain. This winter has been 
marked to us by our keeping house for the first time. I call it 
housekeeping ; but, alas ! we have not the pleasure of entertain- 
ing angels, awares or unawares. We have a small house, but 
large enough for us, only a few rooms furnished — just enough 
to try to make me more comfortable than at board. But then 
I am not well enough even to have friends to tea, so that all I 
strive to do is to keep the house neat and keep myself about. 
I have attended no meetings since I helped fill ' the negro pew.' 
What Anti-Slavery news I get, I get second-hand. I should not 
get along at all, so great is my darkness, were it not for Wen- 
dell to tell me that the world is still going on. . . . We are very 
happy, and only have to regret my health being so poor and 
our own sinfulness. Dear Wendell speaks whenever he can 
leave me, and for his sake I sometimes wish I were myself 
again ; but I dare say it is all right as it is." ' 

And now, with a fireside of his own, and so far, 
tried by the most orthodox canons, a " respectable" 
and responsible citizen, the "' vagabond Abolitionist" 
was ready to buckle on his armor. 



* " Memorial of Ann Phillips," p. 13. 



VI. 

THE IRISH ADDRESS. 

During Mr. Phillips's long absence the contro- 
versy over the status of women in the Anti-Slavery 
societies' had torn these bodies asunder, so that, like 
the patriarch Jacob, Mr. Garrison could say : " With 
my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am 
become two bands." National, State, county, city 
bodies — all were divided, and everywhere there were 
two instead of one.^ The doubling of names, how^- 
ever, did not denote a doubling of forces. When 
the schism occurred, the Garrisonians, having out- 
voted the schismatics, retained possession of the 
original organizations. But they lost their national 
organ, which eloped with the retiring faction, so that 
they were compelled to establish a new one, the 
Standard^ which was published in New York and 
was a sort of twin of the Liberator, Mr. Garrison's 
personal mouthpiece. 

Among the Garrisonians the women were enfran- 
chised, and continued to render the most unselfish 
and successful service. Being free now^ from dis- 
turbing elements they compacted themselves and 
reaffirmed their purpose to conduct a purely moral 



' Ante^ p. Ii6 sqq, 

'■' See this whole question elaborately treated in '■ William Lloyd 
Garrison," vol. \\.^ passim. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 15^ 

war against slavery, avowing their confidence in 
conscience and reason and discussion as the surest 
means wherewith to pull down the strongholds of 
oppression.' On the other hand, the seceding 
brethren tended increasingly to adopt political meth- 
ods, and were soon drawn into parties which rallied 
to stone slavery with ballots. 

As all the world knows, Mr. Phillips sided in this 
division with the Garrisonians and remained to be 
their attorney-general. In common with Abolition- 
ists of every faction, he was incensed at this hour 
by the recent action of Congress in denying the 
right of petition — a right as old as Anglo-Saxon lib- 
erty and embalmed in the Magna Charta, Congress 
had been bombarded for years with petitions for 
emancipation in the District of Columbia. In Jan- 
uary, 1 841, the House of Representatives passed a 
gag law :^ '* That no petition praying the abolition 
of slavery in the District of Columbia or any State 
or any Territory, or the slave trade between the 
States or Territories of the United States, in which 
it now exists, shall -be received by this House." 
The obsequious Senate made haste to concur. "* Nor 
was this all. Ex-President John Quincy Adams, a 
Representative of Massachusetts, who had been hon- 
orably active in presenting these petitions, and who 
in eminence and value of public service was easily 
the foremost statesman in America, was menaced 
with expulsion for his ** impudence.'* 



* •'William Lloyd Garrison," vol. ii., p. 391. 

' By a vote of 114 yeas to 108 nays. A close vote. But slavery 
could say with Mercutio, in the play : " 'Tis not so deep as a well, 
nor so wide as a church door ; but 'tis enough." 

^ Fide " Rise and Fall of the Slave Power," by Henry Wilson. 



154 WENDELI. PHILLIP^;. 

In the autumn atter his return from Europe an 
event occurred which Mr. Phillips eagerly seized 
and used as a sword with which to smite this defiant 
aggression, this twofold assault upon freedom. 

There came from Ireland a monster appeal signed 
by seventy thousand Irishmen, with Daniel O'Con- 
nell and Father Mathew at their head, condemning- 
slavery and urging the Irish in America to identify 
themselves with the Abolitionists.' At this crisis 
the Irish were, almost without exception, on the side 
of slavery. They belonged to the laboring class. 
They were thus brought into competition with the 
nesfroes. Their freedom and their color alone dis- 
tinguished those from these. All the more strongly, 
therefore, did thev prize and seek to emphasize the 
marks of distinction. Moreover, finding, as they 
did, the wealth and fashion and political power of 
the country arrayed against the Abolitionists, and 
hungry themselves for the flesh-pots of Egypt, they 
naturally hurrahed for Pharaoh and went where 
they could fill their stomachs and their pockets. It 
is only a saint who can prefer a lean right to a fat 
wrong, truth out-at-the-elbow to error in broad- 
cloth. 

The Abolitionists hailed the Irish petition with en- 
thusiasm. They hoped it might prove the fulcrum 
on which to rest their Archimedes-lever and move 
over the Irish in America from that side to this. 
They secured Faneuil Hall. They opened it on the 
evening of January 28th, 1842, and filled it as it had 
not been filled since the Lovejoy meeting in 1837. 
Wendell Phillips now as then was the orator of the 



* Vide Liberator, vol. xii., p. 39, for the full text. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 1 55 

occasion. Fresh from the old world, with the rich 
Irish brogue of O'Connell still in his ears, he mounted 
the rostrum and delivered an address which capti- 
vated the assembl-age, the Irish, especially, who 
were present in crowds, going wild over it. This is 
what he said : 

" I hold in my hand, Mr. Chairman, a resolution expressive of 
our thanks to the seventy thousand Irishmen who have sent us 
that token of their sympathy and interest, and especially to those 
high and gallant spirits v^ho lead the noble list. I must say 
that never have I stood in the presence of an audience with 
higher hopes of the rapid progress and success of our cause than 
now. I remember with what devoted earnestness, with what 
unfaltering zeal, Ireland has carried on so many years the 
struggle for her own freedom. It is from such men — whose 
hearts lost no jot of their faith in the grave of Emmet, over 
whose zeal the loss of Curran and Grattan could throw no damp, 
who are now turning the trophies of one field of victory into 
weapons for new conquests, whom a hireling press and prej- 
udiced public could never sever a moment from O'Connell's side 
— it is from the sympathy of such that we have a right to hope 
much. 

"The image of the generous isle comes to us, not only 
' crowned with the spoil of every science, and decked with the 
wreath of every muse,' but we cannot forget that she lent to 
Waterloo the sword which cut the despot's ' shattered sceptre 
through ;' and, to American ears, the crumbled walls of St. 
Stephen's yet stand to echo the eloquence of her Burke, when, 
at the foot of the British throne, he took his place side by side 
with that immortal rebel (pointing to the picture of Washing- 
ton). 

*' From a priest of the Catholic Church we might expect superi- 
ority to that prejudice against color which freezes the sympathies 
of our own churches when humanity points to the slave. I re- 
member that African lips may join in the chants of the Church, 
unrebuked, even under the dome at St. Peter's ; and I have seen 
the colored man in the sacred dress pass with priest and student 
beneath the frowning portals of the Propaganda College at 



156 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Rome, with none to sneer at his complexion, or repulse him 
from society. 

*' I remember that a long line of popes, from Leo to Gregory, 
have denounced the sin of making merchandise of men ; that 
the voice of Rome was the first to be heard against the slave- 
trade, and that the bull of Gregory XVL, forbidding every true 
Catholic to touch the accursed thing, is yet hardly a year old. 

" Ireland is the land of agitation and agitators. We may 
well learn a lesson from her in the battle for human rights. Her 
philosophy is no recluse ; she doffs the cowl and quits the 
cloister, to grasp in friendly effort the hands of the people. No 
pulse beats truer to liberty, to humanity, than those which in 
Dublin quicken at every good from Abolition on this side of the 
ocean. There can be no warmer words of welcome than those 
which welcome the American Abolitionists on their thresholds. 
Let not any one persuade us, Mr. Chairman, that the question 
of slavery is no business of ours, but belongs entirely to the 
South. 

" I trust in that love of liberty which every Irishman brings to 
the country of his adoption, to make him true to her cause at the 
ballot-box, and throw no vote without asking if the hand to 
which he is about to trust political power will use it for the 
slave. When an American was introduced to O'Connell in the 
lobby of the House of Commons, he asked, without putting out 
his hand, ' Are you from the South ? * * Yes, sir.* * A slave- 
holder, I presume ? ' ' Yes, sir.' ' Then,' said the great liber- 
ator, * I have no hand for you ! ' and stalked away. Shall his 
countrymen trust that hand with political power which O'Con- 
nell deemed it pollution to touch ? 

" We remember, Mr, Chairman, that, when a jealous disposi- 
tion tore from the walls of the City Hall of Dublin the picture of 
Henry Grattan, the act but did endear him the more to Ireland. 
The slavocracy of our land thinks to expel that ' old man elo- 
quent,' with the dignity of seventy winters on his brow (pointing 
to a picture of J. Q. Adams), from the halls of Congress. They 
will find him only the more lastingly fixed in the hearts of his 
countrymen. 

" Mr. Chairman, we stand in the presence of at least the name 
of Father Mathew. We remember the millions who pledged 
themselves to temperance from his lips. I hope his countrymen 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 1 57 

will join with me in pledging here eternal hostility to slavery. 
' Will you ever return to his master the slave who once sets foot 
on the soil of Massachusetts ? ' (' No, no, no ! ') ' Will you ever 
raise to office or power the man who will not pledge his utmost 
effort against slavery ? ' (' No, no, no !') 

" Then may we not hope well for freedom ? Thanks to those 
noble men who battle in her cause the world over. The ' ocean 
of their philanthropy knows no shore.' Humanity knows no 
country ; and I am proud, here in Faneuil Hall, fit place to re- 
ceive their message, to learn of O'Connell's fidelity to freedom 
and of Father Mathew's love to the real interests of man." ' 

Amid thunders of applause Mr. Phillips retired 
and the meeting- adjourned. Many Irishmen drew 
their first Anti-Slavery breath as the result of that 
speech, and threw themselves thenceforward into 
the movement with the ardor of their race. When 
O'Connell read it he pronounced it the most classic 
short speech in the English language, and said : ** I 
resign the crown. This young American is without 
an equal. * ' ^ 

On this occasion resolutions denouncing Congress 
for tolerating the existence of slavery under the 
shadow of the Capitol, and demanding its abolition 
in the District of Columbia, were adopted with a 
roar which might have moved the envy of Niagara 
— a genuine Irish roar. 

" Well," remarked Mr. PhilUps, as he left the hall, 
** we will send our resolution to Washington spite 
of the gag law. And we say, as Patrick Henry did 
in the House of Burgesses, when he spoke to George 
III. across the ocean : * If this be treason, make the 
most of it ! ' *" 



* Vide Liberator^ vol. xii., p. i8. 

' Letter from George Thompson to Wendell Phillips (ms.). 

* Letter to a relative (ms.). 



158 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

The purpose of O'Connell and Father Mathew 
was not accomplished by their address. The Irish 
press in America unanimously condemned it. The 
hierarchy here, through the lips of Bishop Hughes, of 
New York, impugned its genuineness ; and, genuine 
or not, declared it the duty of every naturalized 
Irishman to resist and repudiate it with indignation 
as a foreign interference. The various Irish repeal 
associations, although organized to interfere in Brit- 
ish affairs from this side of the water, with character- 
istic inconsistency echoed the tone. of Bishop Hughes 
toward O'Connell and Mathev/ for their interfer- 
ence in American affairs from the other side. To 
illustrate by a current reference, the Irish address 
met precisely the fate which a similar appeal would 
meet to-day headed b}^ Parnell, and urging the Irish 
in the United States to abjure the ** spoils system," 
and adhere to the civil service reformers.^ Indi- 
viduals here and there heard and heeded. The race 
continued to cheer for slavery and " damn the 
niggers." 



* " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. iil., p. 45. 



VII. 

A NEW BATTLE OF CONCORD. 

The town of Concord, some twenty miles distant 
from Boston, and the twin scene with Lexington of 
the first battle in the Revolution, was a stronghold 
of conservatism in the 'forties. Half a dozen 
prominent and elderly squires dominated it, inso- 
much that it was known far and wide as Squireville. 
The squirocracy naturally sympathized with the 
slavocrac}^ In the winter of 1842-43 the Lyceum 
out there invited Wendell Phillips to come and give 
his lecture on '* Street Life in Europe" — an outcome 
of his travels. He did so, confining himself in the 
main to sights abroad, but managing to give slavery 
a number of sharp thrusts as he trod along. These 
passing references piqued curiosit}^ and he was in- 
vited to come again the next winter and speak on 
slavery. He gladly accepted, and the date fixed 
was January 17th, 1844. On January loth a promi- 
nent citizen moved in the Lyceum (which then met 
weekly for debate), that Mr. Phillips be asked to 
choose some other topic, adding that his sentiments 
on slavery, expressed the year before, were " vile, 
pernicious, and abominable." A large majority 
voted to hear him on slavery and nothing else. So 
he came according to agreement, January 17th, and 
spoke for an hour and a half in a strain of invective 
eloquence very galling to the squires, especially to 



l6o WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

two of them, Squire Keyes and Squire Hoar — father 
of the present Senator Hoar. He charged the sin 
of slavery upon the religion of the country, with its 
twenty thousand pulpits, all dumb, or advocating the 
iniquity. The church, he said, had accused the Gar- 
risonians of infidelity, and there was some truth in 
it ; they were infidels to a religion that sustained 
human bondage. iVs for the State, the curse of 
every honest man should be upon its Constitution ; 
could he say to Jefferson, Adams, and Hancock, 
after the experience of fifty years : ** Look upon the 
fruits of your work !" they would bid him crush the 
parchment beneath his feet. 

These utterances were worse than those of the 
year before, and so the next week the conservatives 
in the Lyceum began to debate Phillips's lecture and 
to denounce him. Word had been sent to Phillips 
by his friends, and he came into the meeting while 
Squire Keyes was jeering at him for " leading cap- 
tive silly women." Squire Hoar then took up the 
testimony against the audacious ** stripling" who 
had proclaimed such monstrous doctrines, compli- 
mented him on his eloquence, but warned the young 
against such insidious and exciting oratory. About 
nine o'clock Phillips stepped forward from the rear 
of the hall and asked permission to reply. H^ said : 

"I do not care for criticisms upon my manner of assailing 
slavery. In a struggle for life it is hardly fair for men who are 
lolling at ease to remark that the limbs of the combatants are 
not arranged in classic postures. I agree with the last speaker 
that this is a serious subject ; had it been otherwise I should not 
devote my life to it. Stripling as I am, 1 but echo the voice ot 
the ages, of our venerable forefathers — of statesmen, poets, 
philosophers. The gentleman has painted the dangers to life, 
liberty, and happiness that would be the consequence of doing 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. l6l 

right. These dangers now exist by law at the South. Liberty 
may be bought at too dear a price ; if I cannot have it except by 
sin, I reject it. But I cannot so blaspheme God as to doubt my 
safety in obeying Him. The sanctions of English law are with 
me ; but if I tread the dust of law beneath my feet and enter the 
Holy of Holies, what do 1 find written there ? * Thou shalt not 
deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped to thee ; 
he shall dwell with you, even among you.' I throw myself then 
on the bosom of Infinite Wisdom. Even the heathen will tell 
you, ' Let justice be done though the heavens fall ;* and the old 
reformer answered when warned against the danger of going to 
Rome, * It is not necessary that I should live ; it is necessary 
that I go to Rome.' But now our pulpits are silent — whoever 
heard this subject presented until it was done by * silly women * 
and ' striplings ' ? The first speaker accused me of ambition ; 
let me tell him that ambition chooses a smoother path to fame. 
And to you, my young friends, who have been cautioned against 
exciting topics and advised to fold your hands in selfish ease, 
I would say. Not so — throw yourselves upon the altar of some 
noble cause ! To rise in the morning only to eat and drink, and 
gather gold — that is a life not worth living. Enthusiasm is the 
life of the soul." 

Never was an oratorical triumph more complete. 
The audience applauded heartily ; the meeting, 
which was to vote Phillips down, was hastily ad. 
journed, and from that day forward he was the 
favorite speaker in Concord. It was in the next year 
(March, 1845) that he gave the thriUing address there 
which Thoreau has commemorated, containing a 
prayer which concluded, says Thoreau, " Not like 
the Thanksgiving proclamations, with * God save the 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts,' but with ' God 
dash it into a thousand pieces, till there shall not 
remain a fragment on which a man who dare not tell 
his name can stand.' " The reference here was to 
Frederick Douglass, who had then newly escaped 
from slavery, who in Boston was in momentary 



l62 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

danger of arrest and rendition, and whose liberty 
was conditioned upon his denial of his identity. 

This was the day of extreme statements, for in 
that same year — 1845 — Emerson said, in an emanci- 
pation address at Waltham (one of his earliest) : 

" If the Creator of the negro has given him up to stand as a 
victim of the white man beside him, to stoop under his pack and 
to bleed under his whip — if that be the doctrine, then I say, ' If 
He has given up his cause, then He has also given up mine, who 
feel his wrong and ours, who in our hearts must curse the 
Creator who has undone him.' " ^ 

Of course in these utterances Emerson did not 
mean to curse the Creator, nor did Phillips mean 
to curse civil government. In both cases it was the 
pretence of God and the pretence of law that was 
denounced — that worst form of atheism, which wor- 
ships the devil in the name of Christ. The real in- 
fidels of those davs were in the churches, and the 
real anarchists were in office at Washington. 

All professional lecturers meet with some humor- 
ous and comical incidents which relieve some of the 
drudgery of their work. Perhaps a larger propor- 
tion fell to the lot of Anti-Slavery lecturers than to 
others. Certainly Mr. Phillips had a keen sense of 
humor. Shortly after the Concord episode he was 
invited to lecture before a Lyceum in a neighboring 
country town. Arriving at the place he went di- 
rectl}^ to the church in which the Lyceum was as- 
sembled, and was ushered into a pew with the Presi- 
dent and Secretary. The latter asked him if he had 
brought his lecture on Europe, and he replied that 
he had. This information the Secretary imparted 



' " Recollections of Wendell Phillips," by F. B. Sanborn (ms.). 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 163 

to the President, who received it with an intimation 
of displeasure, and he, turning to Mr. PhiUips, 
asked : " Did we invite you here to lecture on 
Europe?" "No," replied Mr. Phillips, "you in- 
vited me here to lecture. The subject was not speci- 
fied. I told the Secretary that I brought my lec- 
ture on Europe with me. 1 carry all my lectures in 
my head." " Didn't the Secretary write to you 
that we wanted a lecture on slavery ?" 

" No, he did not," rejoined Mr. Phillips. The 
somewhat irate President took his official seat, and 
calling the meeting to order announced that the 
Lyceum had instructed its Secretary to write to Mr. 
Phillips to lecture to them upon the subject of 
slavery, and added, " There's Mr. Phillips, and he 
says he was not invited to lecture on any specified 
topic ; and there's the Secretary." Whereupon the 
Secretary responded : "I wasn't going to have Anti- 
Slavery crammed down my throat !" " Nor," re- 
joined the President, " are we going to have you 
crammed down our throats !" 

The members of the Lyceum then discussed the 
question, and by a large majority decided to have 
an Anti-Slavery lecture. The most amusing part of 
the discussion, to him, was a remark made by a 
member that he " supposed Mr. Phillips would as 
lief lecture on slavery if he were paid the same." ^ 



* Recollections of Miss Mary Grew Cms.). 



VIII. 

THE ** COVENANT WITH DEATH." 

In following to an end the Concord incident we 
have stolen a march upon time. We must now re- 
trace our steps and go back to the autumn of 1842, 
and to the succeeding months, in order to observe 
certain occurrences of a broader and more essential 
nature — events in which Mr. Phillips was far more 
vitally concerned. 

In October a mulatto named Latimer came to 
Boston from Norfolk, Va. He was arrested and 
thrown into jail on a charge of theft. Presently it 
was shown that he was indeed a thief — he had stolen 
himself ! Friends rallied to his side and demanded 
a trial by jury. " No," replied Judge Shaw, "he 
is a fugitive slave. The Constitution of the United 
States authorizes the owner of such an one to arrest 
him in any State to w^hich he may have fled." ' 

The city was wild with excitement. The Aboli- 
tionists thronged to Faneuil Hall — the trysting-place 
of liberty. It was on a Sunda}' night. No matter. 
Did not Christ maintain that acts of mercy were acts 
of worship ? And what act of mercy so supreme as 
the rescue of a man from slave-hounds ? Mr. Phil- 
lips spoke. Referring to Judge Shaw's ruling, he 
exclaimed : " We presume to believe the Bible out- 



^ See the ruling in the Massachusetts court records of the period. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 165 

weighs the statute-book. When I look on those 
crowded thousands and see them trample on their 
consciences and on the rights of their fellowmen, at 
the bidding of a piece of parchment, I say, my curse 
be on the Constitution of these United States!"^ 
This was his first direct collision with the Consti- 
tution. The case of Latimer opened his eyes to a 
clear perception of the fact that in advocating the 
rights of the blacks his real antagonist was the 
Union, It was a moment like that when Luther 
realized that in undertaking to reform the Romish 
Church he was assailing the Papacy ; like that when 
the Revolutionary sires were startled to find that in 
defending their charters they were committing 
treason — an earthquake experience full of destiny. 
But as Luther composed himself and said : " Here 
I must stand ; God help me, I can do nothing else !" 
as the fathers said: "If this be revolution, let it 
come !" so he said : " If I must choose between the 
Union and liberty, then I choose liberty first, Union 
afterward !" 

Happily Latimer was saved, an offer being made 
and accepted to pay four hundred dollars for his re- 
lease, with free papers ; whereupon the " chattel" 
became a man, and the free papers were surrendered 
instead of the fugitive.' But from this moment 
Wendell Phillips began to denounce the Constitution, 
that old Pro-Slavery Constitution which the Civil 
War so magfnificentlv amended. He went further. 
He personally seceded from the Union and refused 
all voluntary action under it. His law office — this 
he closed, for an attorney had to take an oath to 



» Vide Liberator, vol. xii., p. 178. "^ Ib„ p. 205, 



l66 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

support the Constitution, The ballot-box — this he 
forswore, for a voter was an active participant m 
governmental affairs. Thus he stood — until the out- 
break of the Rebellion, which changed the whole situ- 
ation — a man without a country. He became a 
political Ishmael, his hand against every man and 
every man's hand against him. Whatever may be 
thought of his wisdom, no one can deny his self- 
sacrifice. It was an act of conscience as sublime as 
Luther's, as heroic as the penmanship of John Han- 
cock on the Declaration of Independence, which 
George III. read and understood across the Atlantic. 
Nor did Mr. Phillips take this step in a passion. 
He took it calmly, soberly, as he did everything 
else, and with a perfect knosvledge of what and all 
it meant. He deliberately counted the cost. "He 
chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of 
God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season" 
— a modern version of Moses quitting the palace of 
Pharaoh for the brick-yard. The contemporary 
world hissed both, but heaven and history commend. 
Anyhow, what is the opinion of man compared with 
a good conscience and the approbation of God ? 
When he came to study the Constitution, and, more 

^ significantly, when he analyzed it in the light of its 
consistent interpretation for half a century, he 
straightway discovered that it was a ** covenant 
with death and an agreement with hell." It erected 
the negation of God into a system of government. 

/ For consider, here was the clause which legalized 
the slave-trade for twent}^ years from the date of its 
adoption ; here was the clause which allowed the 
slave-masters to count three fifths of their slaves in 
the basis of national representation ; and here was 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 167 

the clause which made provision for the return of 
fugitives throughout the Union — a trinity of evil as 
Satanic as the orthodox trinity v^^as divine. Then, 
when he Hfted his eyes from the parchment, and 
looked back into the Convention which framed it, he 
saw — what ? Why, that these provisions expressed 
the exact purpose of its authors.' And w^hen he 
glanced at the successive administrations since that 
time, at the decisions of the courts, at the practice 
of the country, at the existing situation, he was 
driven to the conclusion that consistent AboHtionism 
was impossible under that document, and that slavery 
was intrenched in the fundamental law of the na- 
tion. 

Accordingly, he was indignant but not surprised 
to observe that the liberty of speech and the freedom 
of the press were not tolerated in the Southern half 
of the Union, and were only exercised in the North- 
ern half at the peril of the free speakers and free 
printers ; that the right of trial by jury was denied 
to any colored man in any State who might be 
claimed as a slave ; * that the right of petition was 
struck down on the floor of Congress f that slavery 
was declared to be the supreme law of the land. 

Mr. Phillips was amazed at his own blindness in 
not sooner discovering all this. Well, he saw it 
now, and without waiting to ask what others would 
do, he did as his Puritan ancestors had done under 
the despotism of Charles I. and Archbishop Laud — 
he came out. 



' Vidf the Proceedings of the Convention. Compare " The Consti- 
tution a Pro-Slavery Compact," by Wendell Phillips. 
^ Case of Prigg vs. the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. 
» /Inff, p. 153. 



l68 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Soon he was gratified to find that he was not 
alone. Others of the Abolitionists saw what he saw, 
felt as he felt, acted as he acted. There was a band of 
come-outers, among them his friends and co -laborers. 
Garrison and Quinc}'. The months that followed 
were weary, anxious, tumultuous. There was a 
pang in every hour. This question was the topic of 
debate at every Anti-Slavery meeting, in every Anti- 
Slaver}^ society. In 1843 the Massachusetts Society 
adopted " come-outer" resolutions.' In 1844 the 
New England and National societies did likewise.' 
One by one the kindred organizations throughout 
the free States wheeled into line.^ Soon the entire 
Garrisonian phalanx presented a united front. In 
the consciences and the platforms of these bodies the 
Pro-Slavery Union was dissolved. But these few 
sentences coldlv, feeblv summarize convulsive de- 
bates and torturing deliberations. How can Guten- 
berg's types depict heart agonies ? Remember what 
that old Constitution was : the ark of the political 
covenant, as sacred in the reverence of the Ameri- 
can people as its prototype was in the feelings of the 
ancient Israelites. Reflect upon the prejudices of 
education and habit which these men had to conquer 
in themselves. Recall the rage which their renunci- 
ation and denunciation provoked in the North as 
well as in the South, the blasphemy they were 
charged with, and then estimate the depth of their 
regard for those who were bound, and their passion 
for liberty ! 

They were true to their convictions. They cried 



^ Liberator, vol. xiii., p. 19. ^ Ih,, vol. xiv., pp. 82 and 91. 

^ ** Garrison and his Times," p. 338. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 169 

aloud and spared not. The Anti-Slavery organs in 
Boston and in New York displayed in bold head-lines 
the obnoxious motto : " No Union with Slave-hold- 
ers." The resolutions at Anti-Slavery meetings 
bristled with aggressive defiance. 

Meantime those Abolitionists who had withdrawn 
in 1840 from the Garrisonian organizations, because 
they could not believe that a coat and a petticoat 
had equal rights, now made haste to identify them- 
selves with a political movement just started, and 
called the " Liberty party." ' This party partici- 
pated in State and national elections with all the 
machinery of Conventions and candidates. It was 
small but well organized, earnest and alert. Pro- 
fessedly it was actuated by the same motives as the 
Garrisonians. In reality it was 

" cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in 



To saucy doubts and fears," 

by the inevitable limitations of politics. More, the 
" Liberty party," as an Anti-Slavery party, was 
fatally hampered by the compromises of the Consti- 
tution. It could only propose such measures as the 
Constitution would sanction. When the National 
Government had exhausted its whole power, that 
which the Abolitionists hated and meant to destroy, 
the slave system, would remain intact. Under a Pro- 
Slavery Constitution what chance had an Anti- 
Slavery crusade ? 

Recognizing this difficulty, the Liberty party 
claimed sometimes that the Constitution had been 
fatally misinterpreted, that the text was blameless, 



' Vide Richard H. Dana's article on the Republican party, in 
Johnson's New Universal Cyclopcedia, in loco. 



r/O WENDELL PHILLIIS. 

that it was, in fact, an Abolition cl(3cumcnt. This was 
the view of William Goodell, and Gerrit Smith, and 
George B. Cheever — honest and able men. At other 
times, and by other exponents, it was asserted that 
the Constitution could be amended and made Anti- 
Slavery if it were not so. At all times the political 
Abolitionists derided and belittled the moral-suasion 
school and cried for action. Many haters of slavery 
became impatient and wanted to grapple the eyil in 
a hand-to-hand encounter — gladiator fashion — with 
the ballot-box for an arena. With reyolution in the 
air they esteemed an agitation that was educative 
and moral alone as inadequate. This it was that 
led Whittier and Sumner and Wilson and Hale and 
Chase to adopt political expedients. 

All through these years a fierce controversy was 
carried on between these two wings of the Abolition 
host — the moral suasionists and the political action- 
ists, each appealing for recruits on the ground of 
superior facilities, each emphasizing the defects of 
the other, but both doing a grand work for truth 
and righteousness, though in different, and, as it often 
appeared, antagonistic ways. 

Mr. Phillips, of course, participated in the discus- 
sions of the hour. Indeed, he was preternatu rally 
active — a White Plume of Navarre in this Ivr3\ It 
was largely owing to his skill as an organizer, and 
even more to his eloquence on the platform, that the 
Garrisonians had been held together, despite the 
disintegrating influence of the Liberty party, and 
were led to take and hold the tremendous posi- 
tion of disunion. In 1845 ^^ wrote and published 
an argument entitled, " The Constitution a Pro- 
Slavery Compact." With masterly and unanswer- 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 171 

able logic he proved — what everybody now admits, 
and what the amendments, which the Civil War 
made possible, conclusive!}^ avouch — that the Consti- 
tution as it then stood was the Gibraltar of human 
bondage. He also published anonymously in the 
same year a pamphlet, " Can Abolitionists Vote or 
take Office under the United States Constitution?" 
Here he marshalled the pros and cons in successive 
order under the title of objections and answers. 
The brochure is a model of argumentative skill, and 
is full of wit and pat applications. As it was in- 
tended to defend and elucidate his position as a 
" come-outer," let us blow the dust from it and 
sample it ; no danger of falling asleep in the task ! 

" My object," he says, " in becoming a disunionist is to free 
the slave, and meantime to live a consistent life. I want men 
to understand me. And I submit that the body of the Roman 
people understood belter and felt more earnestly the struggle 
between the people and the princes, when the little band of 
democrats left the city and encamped on Mons Sacer, outside, 
than while they remained mixed up and voting with their mas- 
ters. Dissolution is our Mons Sacer. God grant it may become 
equally famous in the world's history as the spot where the right 
triumphed." 

To the objection that his course was Pharisaical, 
he replied : 

" Because we refuse to aid a wrongdoer in his sin we by no 
means proclaim that we think our whole character better than 
his. It is neither pharisaical to have opinions nor presumptuous 
to guide our lives by them. He would be a strange preacher 
who should set out to reform his circle by joining in all their 
sins. This reminds me of the tipsy Duke of Norfolk, who, see- 
ing a drunken friend in the gutter, hiccoughed : ' My dear 
fellow, I can't help you out, but I'll do better — I'll lie down by 
your side ! ' " 



172 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

In noticing the objection that by the payment of 
taxes he recognized and supported the State practi- 
cally while renouncing it in theory, he answered : 

*' We are responsible only so far as our ability and willing- 
ness go. Any evil which springs from our acts incidentally, 
without our ability or will, we are not responsible for. Such re- 
sponsibility reminds me of that principle of Turkish law which 
Dr. Clark mentions in his travels, and which they call ' homicide 
by an intermediate cause.' The case he relates is this : A 
young man in love poisoned himself because the girl's father 
refused his consent to the marriage. The Cadi sentenced the 
father to pay a fine of eighty dollars, saying : ' If you had not 
had a daughter, this young man would not have loved ; if he 
had not loved, he had never been disappointed ; if he had not 
been disappointed, he would not have taken poison.' It was the 
same Cadi, possibly, who sentenced the island of Samos to pay 
for the wrecking of a vessel, because, if the island had not been 
in the way, the vessel would not have been wrecked ! 

He thus refers to the assertion that the Constitu- 
tion, though Pro- Slavery now might be amended, 
and that he could vote meanwhile in that hope : 

" It is necessary to swear to support it as it is. What it may 
become we know not. We speak of it as it is and repudiate it 
as it is. We will not brand it as Pro-Slavery after it has ceased 
to be so. This objection to our position reminds me of Miss 
Martineau's story of the little boy who hurt himself and sat cry- 
ing on the sidewalk. ' Don't cry,' said a friend, ' it won't hurt 
you to-morrow.' ' Well, then,' whimpered the child, * I won't 
cry to-morrow ! ' " 

To the common statement that his position was 
that of a hot-head and a zealot, he responded : 

*' History, from the earliest Christians downward, is full of in- 
stances of men who refused all connection with government and^^ 
all the influences which office could bestow rather than deny ' 
their principles or aid in wrong-doing. Sir Thomas More need 
never have mounted the scaffold, had he only consented to take 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 1 73 

the oath of supremacy. He had only to tell a lie with solemnity, 
as we are asked to do, and he might not only have saved his 
life, but, as the trimmers of his day would have told him, 
doubled his influence. Pitt resigned his place as Prime Minister 
of England rather than break faith with the Catholics of Ire- 
land. Should I not resign a ballot rather than break faith with 
the slave ?" 

Further, and in the same connection, he adds : 

" An act of conscience is always a grand act. Whether right 
or wrong it represents the best self of our nature. While an 
under-clerk in the War Office, Granville Sharp, that patriarch 
of the Anti-Slavery enterprise in England, sympathized with 
America in our struggle for independence. Orders reached his 
office to ship munitions of war to the revolted Colonies. If his 
hand had entered the account of such a cargo it would have con- 
tracted, in his eyes, the stain of innocent blood. To avoid this 
pollution, he resigned his place and means of subsistence at a 
period of life when he could no longer hope to find lucrative 
employment. As the thoughtful clerk of the War Office takes 
down his hat from the peg where it had hung for twenty years, 
methinks I hear one of our critics cry out : ' Friend Sharp, you 
are absurdly scrupulous ; you may innocently aid Government 
in doing wrong.' While the Liberty party yelps at his heels : 
* My dear sir, you are losing your influence ! ' And indeed it is 
melancholy to reflect how, from that moment, the mighty under- 
clerk of the War Office (!) dwindled into the mere Granville 
Sharp of history ! the man of whom Mansfield and Hargrave 
were content to learn law, and Wilberforce philanthropy." 

These are hap-hazard snatches made in turning the 
pages of Mr. Phillips's *' Anti-Slavery Catechism." 
Those who would get a clear insight into the moral 
situation in the 'forties should read it from cover to 
cover. It is more than a polemic— it is a picture. 



IX. 

INFIDELITY IX THE 'FORTIES. 

At the period now under review, with one or two 
small but honorable exceptions, like the Freewill 
Baptists and the Free Presbyterians, the churches 
were all the apologists and often the defenders ot 
man-stealing. Thus the Christianity of America 
was three thousand years behind the Judaism of 
Moses, which denounced man-stealing. Individual 
pulpits and individual church-members, shining 
lights in this dreary midnight, were found in all the 
historic denominations refusing to quench their 
beams. But exceptions do not break — they prove 
the rule. As organized bodies, the churches ad- 
mitted slave-holders to their communion, installed 
them in their pulpits, and screened their sin with 
palliative resolutions. At the same time they 
branded the Abolitionists as fanatics, meddling with 
what did not concern them, and anathematized them 
as infidels, assaulting the administration of Provi- 
dence. 

For example, the Rev. Wilbur Fisk, the leader of 
New England Methodism, declared that " the gen- 
eral rule of Christianity not only permits, but in sup- 
posable circumstances enjoins a continuance of the 
Master's authority." A New England Methodist 
bishop maintained that the right to hold slaves is 
founded on this dictum : " ' Tnerefore all things 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 175 

whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do 
ye even so to them.' " 

The Inquisitors used to torture their victims into 
confessing whatever they chose to extort. But the 
worst instance of Inquisitorial torture on record is 
this which wrings a justification of slavery from the 
Golden Rule. Oh sapient commentator, go into 
history as Bishop Columbus, for you discovered 
what no one else ever dreamed of, that the Golden 
Rule, which seems to teach that men should do as 
they would be done unto, teaches instead the right 
of men to do as they would not be done unto ! 

The Rev. Dr. Way land, President of the Brown 
University, the Coryphaeus of the Baptists, pub- 
lished a book in which he taught that " the people 
of the North are in such relation to the people of the 
South that they ought not to agitate the question of 
slavery, and that it would be an act of bad faith for 
Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Co- 
lumbia." Among the Congregationalists Professor 
Moses Stuart, at Andover Seminary, and President 
Lord, at Dartmouth College, were the thick and 
thin defenders of slavery ; while their most prominent 
and influential pulpits were occupied by pastors who 
preached Christ at the North so as not to offend the 
devil at the South. The Presbyterians, the Epis- 
copalians, the Unitarians, the Universalists, the 
Quakers, wide apart as the poles, and swearing 
prayers at one another, on other points, were cor- 
dially at one in this, and in the contemplation of the 
Southern "form of economic subordination" were 
drawn into a brotherhood of wonder and delight. 

If such was the feeling among the churches in the 
free States, the situation in the slave States may be 



1/6 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

imagined. There, with absolutely no exceptions, 
pastors and laymen preached and practised the 
Gospel according to St. John — C. Calhoun. A cer- 
tain prominent pulpiteer of South Carolina died one 
day — for even slave-holding saints were not immortal 
— his estate was sold at auction, and was advertised 
in the following terms : 

" A plantation on and in Wateree Swamp (a good 
place for a slave plantation) ; a library, chiefly theo- 
logical ; twenty-seven negroes, some of them very 
prime ; two mules, one horse, and an old wagon." * 

Well, in these circumstances, as the Abolitionists 
had not hesitated to attack the State, so neither did 
they hesitate to attack the Church. They recog- 
nized in these twain one flesh. It was the Siamese 
twins over again. The State was Chang and the 
Church was E7ig, Many of the Anti-Slavery apos- 
tles, who had set out in orthodox standing, were dis- 
gusted into unbelief, Garrison himself among the 
rest. Mr. Phillips held fast to his ancestral faith. 
He denounced the Church as it existed precisely as 
he denounced the State. But he saved his Christian 
creed by making a distinction which will bear ex- 
amination, and which may be needed again some 
time. He distinguished between Christianity and 
ChiircJiianity. While he held that the one was 
divine, he perceived that the other was human. 
Christ was God manifest. The Church was an insti- 
tution which accepted so much of His spirit and 
works as it could or would embody. As Pharisee- 
ism, when the Nazarine was in Judea, had formal- 



* See this whole subject treated in detail in " Garrison and his 
Times," /ajw«, but particularly in chap, xiv. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 1 7/ 

Ized the life out of religion and represented the show, 
not the substance of the divine in the human, so 
now he held that the nominal Christianity around 
about him was a body out of which the soul had 
gone. And he comforted himself with the reflection 
that the true Church, always and everywhere, is 
composed of those who are likest and nearest to 
Christ. Hence he made a solitude in his own heart 
and set up an altar and worshipped there apart.' 
Meanwhile he drew his ideals and borrowed his 
methods from Jesus of Nazareth, '* in whom lives 
the moral earnestness of the world. "^ He said: 
** The men who have learned of him most closely — • 
Paul, Luther, Weslej^ — have marked their own age 
and moulded for good all after-time." ^ 

Holding these views he was nothing disturbed by 
the charges of infidelity with which the churches 
pelted him, no more than he was by the State's in- 
dictment of him as a traitor. Treason to a Pro- 
Slavery Constitution and infidelity to a Pro-Slavery 
religion he considered the highest patriotism and 
the truest Christianity. As James Otis thundered 
against the despot in England, so he thundered 
against the tyrant in America. As the Master Him- 
self smote Phariseeisra eighteen hundred years ago, 
so he " spoke daggers" against the Pharisees of the 
nineteenth century. Thus, in one of his most tren- 
chant speeches, he exclaimed : 

** When the pulpit preached slave-hunting, and the law bound 



* For Mr. Phillips's own statement of his religious convictions, 
see pp. 431-439. 

' "Sketches and Reminiscences of the Radical Club," by Mrs. 
J. T. Sargent, p. 8r. 

' Ib.,^. 147. 



178 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

the victim, and Society said, * Amen I tiiis will make money,' 
we were 'fanatics,' 'seditious,' ' scorners of the pulpit,* 
' traitors.' Genius of the past, drop not from thy tablets one of 
those honorable names I We claim them all as our surest title- 
deeds to the memory and gratitude of mankind. We, indeed, 
thought man more than Constitutions, humanity and justice of 
more worth than law. Seal up the record ! If America is 
proud of her part, let her rest assured we are not ashamed of 
ours I " ' 



* The Sims Anniversary, '* Speeches and Lectures," pp. 75. 76. 



X. 

THE AGITATOR. 

Mr. Phillips was now the loneliest man on the 
continent — almost as " solitary" as G. P. R. James's 
famous horseman in the novel. He had discarded 
the State and had left the Church, not, like some of 
his friends, because of any disagreement with the 
philosophy of Government, or of any quarrel with 
Christianity, to which he stoutly adhered, but as a 
protest against the prostitution of State and Church 
to wicked ends and unholy uses. 

In reflecting upon his ways and means of life and 
usefulness in these days, he was obliged to acknowl- 
edge that all the old arenas were closed against him 
— the Court, the State House, the Sanctuary. Prov- 
identially he had an independent income, so that 
poverty was not an added discomfort. But desiring 
and fitted to influence the world for good, along 
what lines should he exert himself ? Surrounded by 
mountainous oppositions, how should he level them ? 
Face to face with triumphant majorities on the wrong 
side, how could he swing them over to the right 
side ? 

These self-communings led Mr. Phillips to invent 
and adopt his characteristic method of agitation. 
He was the first and greatest American agitator. 
He made a platform outside of the State, outside of 
the Church, untrammelled by any limitations save 



l80 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

those which inhere in human nature, with no politi- 
cal and no ecclesiastical creed to guard, a platform 
devoted to the freest, broadest, most critical discus- 
sion of questions and issues ; and this j)latform he 
put on wheels and moved from Maine to California, 
himself its central and commanding figure. This 
was his place of business, his Senate, his Rialto, his 
temple. And he made a business of summoning 
parties, sects, trades, social usages, for judgment to 
his peripatetic Faneuil Hall. Others for a special 
purpose dipped into agitation, as a bather wades 
into the surf, and then returned to their wonted 
vocations. He had no other calling, but trod the 
platform as king in a realm unique. 

Mr. Phillips expected that the throne he first 
founded and filled would survive him and find an 
endless succession of occupants, because he claimed 
for this function of outside observation and criticism 
an essential and permanent place in American life, 
and he based this claim upon a profound philosophy. 
This philosophy embraced five cardinal principles. 
Let us consider these principles, for a clear under- 
standing of them is necessary in order to an in- 
telligent appreciation of his character and ca- 
reer : 

I. He believed absolutely in the supreme power 
of ideas. Charge these with the dynamite of right- 
eousness and conscience and they would blow any 
and every form of opposition to atoms. " The maxi 
who launches a sound argument," he said, " who 
sets on two feet a startlmg fact and bids it travel 
across the continent, is just ascertain that in the end 
he will change the government, as if to destroy the 
Capitol he had placed gunpowder under the Senate 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. l8l 

Chamber."' Hence he discountenanced force in a 
republic. Why resort to bayonets when ideas are 
stronger ? He had no patience with anarchy and 
anarchists. " Agitation," said he, " is an old word 
with a new meaning. Sir Robert Peel defined it to 
be * the marshalling of the conscience of a nation to 
mould its laws.' It is above-board-— no oath-bound 
secret societies like those of old times in Ireland and 
of the Continent to-day. Its means are reason and 
arguments ; no appeal to arms. Wait patiently for 
the slow growth of public opinion. The French- 
man is angry with his government : he throws up 
barricades and shots his guns to the lips. A week's 
fury drags the nation ahead a hand-breadth, reaction 
lets it settle half-way back again. As Lord Chester- 
field said, a hundred years ago : * You Frenchmen 
erect barricades, but never any barriers.' An Eng- 
lishman is dissatisfied with public affairs : he brings 
his charges, offers his proofs, waits for prejudice to 
relax, for public opinion to inform itself. Then 
every step taken is taken forever ; an abuse once 
removed never reappears in history." ^ 

2. Next to ideas Mr. Phillips believed in the peo- 
ple — in the average common-sense and capacity of 
the millions. He never wearied of appealing from 
the people ill-informed to the people well-informed. 
This was the root of his republicanism, and the reason 
why he claimed for the most ignorant the ballot and 
the school, and all other educational appliances. 
Listen to him on this point : 

" ' Vox populi, vox Dei.' I do not mean this of any single 



* Speech on Public Opinion, " Speeches and Lectures," p. 45. 

* Lecture on Daniel O'Connell, see Appendix. 



l82 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

verdict which the people of to-day may record. In time the self- 
ishness of one class neutralizes the selfishness of another. The 
people always mean right, and in the end they will do right. 
I believe in the twenty millions — not the twenty millions that 
live now, necessarily — to arrange this question of slavery, which 
priests and politicians have sought to keep out of sight. They 
have it locked up in the Senate. Chamber ; they have hidden it 
behind the communion-table ; they have appealed to the super- 
stitious and idolatrous veneration for the State and the Union 
to avoid this question, and so have kept it from the influence of 
the great democratic tendencies of the masses. But change all 
this, drag it from its concealment, and give it to the people ; 
launch it on the age and all is safe. It will find a safe harbor." ^ 

3. These words suggest another point in Mr. Phil- 
lips's philosophy of agitation, viz., the moral timidity 
of men under free institutions. He remarks : 

" It is a singular fact that, the freer a nation becomes, the 
more utterly democratic the form of its institutions, this outside 
agitation, this pressure of public opinion to direct political action, 
becomes more and more necessary. The general judgment is, 
that the freest possible government produces the freest possible 
men and woinen, the most individual, the least servile to the 
Judgment of others. But a moment's reflection will show any 
man that this is an unreasonable expectation, and that, on the 
contrary, entire equality and freedom in political forms almost 
inevitably tend to make the individual subside into the mass and 
lose his identity in the general whole. Suppose we stood in 
England to-night. There is the nobility and here is the Church. 
There is the trading-class and here is the literary. A broad 
gulf separates the four, and provided a member of either can 
conciliate his own section, he can afford in a very large measure 
to despise the judgment of the other three. He has to some ex- 
tent a refuge and a breakwater against the tyranny of what we 
call public opinion. But in a country like ours, of absolute 
democratic equality, public opinion is not only omnipotent, it is 
omnipresent. There is no refuge from its tyranny ; there is no 



'Speeches and Lectures," pp. 45, 46. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 1 83 

hiding from its reach ; and the result is that, if you take the old 
Greek lantern and go about to seek among a hundred you will 
find not one single American who really has not, or who does 
not fancy at least that he has, something to gain or lose in his 
ambition, his social life, or his business from the good opinion 
and the votes of those around him. And the consequence is 
that, instead of being a mass of individuals, each one fearlessly 
blurting out his own convictions, as a nation, compared with 
other nations, we are a mass of cowards. More than all other 
people we are afraid of each other." ' 

The great agencies through which public opinion 
here finds expression are, the pulpit, parties, and the 
press. These he thought inadequate to deal with 
what the French call "burning questions," hke 
slavery, woman suffrage, temperance, and labor, 
with issues ahead of public opinion, partly from pre- 
occupation, but chiefly because, in the nature of the 
case, they voice and are bound by the average sen- 
timent. Hear him agaifi : 

" The pulpit, for instance, has a sphere of its own. It is too 
busy getting men to heaven to concern itself with worldly duties 
and obligations. And when it tries to direct the parish in polit- 
ical and social ways, it is baffled by the fact that among its 
supporters are men of all parties and of all social grades, ready 
to take offence at any word which relates to their earthly pur- 
suits or interests, and spoken in a tone ot criticism or rebuke. 
As the minister's settlement and salary depend upon the unity 
and good-will of the people he preaches to. he cannot fairly be 
expected, save in exceptional and special cases, to antagonize 
his flock. If all clergymen were like Paul, or Luther, or Wesley, 
they might give, not take orders. But as the average clergyman 
is an average man he will be bound by average conditions." ^ 



* Lecture on O'Connell, see Appendix. 

2 Extract from a lecture on Agitation which Mr. Phillips delivered 
far and wide for many years, but of which no extended report is now 
available. 



1 84 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

The defect thus indicated in the Church, Mr. Phil* 
lips also discovered in parties and the press : 

" If you were a caucus to-night and I were your orator, none 
of you could get beyond the necessary and timid limitations of 
party. You not only would not demand, you would not allow 
me to utter one word of what you really thought and what I 
thought. You would demand of me — and my value as a caucus- 
speaker would depend entirely on the adroitness and the vigi- 
lance with which I met the demand — that I should not utter one 
single word which would compromise the vote of next week. 
That is politics. So with the press. Seemingly independent, and 
sometimes really so, the press can afford only to mount the 
cresting wave, not go beyond it. The editor might as well 
shoot his reader with a bullet as with a new idea. He must hit 
the exact line of the opinion of the day. I am not finding fault 
with him ; I am only describing him. Some three years ago I 
took to one of the freest of the Boston journals a letter, and by 
appropriate consideration induced its editor to print it. As we 
glanced along its contents and came to the concluding state- 
ment, he said : ' Couldn't you omit that ? ' I said, ' No ; I 
wrote it for that ; it is the gist of the statement.' * Well,' said 
he, ' it is true ; there is not a boy in the streets who does not 
know that it is true ; but I wish you could omit that.' I insisted, 
and the next morning, fairly and justly, he printed the whole. 
Side by side he put an article of his own in which he said : 
' We copy in the next column an article from Mr. Phillips, and 
we only regret the absurd and unfounded statement with which 
he concludes it.' He had kept his promise by printing the 
article ; he saved his reputation by printing the comment. And 
that, again, is the inevitable, the essential limitation of the press 
in a republican community. Our institutions, floating un- 
anchored on the shifting surface of popular opinion, cannot 
afford to hold back or to draw forward a hated question, and 
compel a reluctant public to look at it and to consider it. Hence, 
as you see at once, the moment a large issue, twenty years ahead 
of its age, presents itself to the consideration of an empire or of 
a republic, just in proportion to the freedom of its institutions is 
the necessity of a platform outside of the press, of politics, and 
of the Church, whereon stand men with no candidate to elect, 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 1 85 

with no plan to carry, with no reputation to stake, with no ob- 
ject but the truth, no purpose but to tear the question open and 
let the light through it." ' 

4. Another principle in Mr. Phillips's theory 
touched the reign of public opinion in a republic like 
ours, whose sceptre is at once omnipotent and irreso- 
lute : 

" Each man here, in fact, holds his property and his life de- 
pendent on the constant presence of an agitation like this of 
Anti-Slavery. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty ; power 
is ever stealing from the many to the few. The manna of popu- 
lar liberty must be gathered each day or it is rotten. The living 
sap of to-day outgrows the dead rind of yesterday. The hand 
intrusted with power becomes, either from human depravity or 
esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people. Only by 
continual oversight can the democrat in office be prevented 
from hardening into a despot ; only by unintermitted agitation 
can a people be kept sufficiently awake to principle not to let 
liberty be smothered in material prosperity. . . . 

" Some men suppose that, in order to the people's governing 
themselves, it is only necessary, as Fisher Ames said, that the 
' Rights of man be printed and that every citizen have a copy ;'" 
as the Epicureans two thousand years ago imagined God a being 
who arranged this marvellous machinery, set it going, and then 
sunk to sleep. Republics exist only on the tenure of being con- 
stantly agitated. The Anti-Slavery agitation is an important, 
nay, an essential part of the machinery of the State. It is not 
a disease nor a medicine. No ; it is the normal state — the nor- 
mal state of the nation. Never, to our latest posterity, can we 
afford to do without prophets like Garrison, to stir up the mo- 
notony of wealth and reawake the people to the great ideas that 
are constantly fading out of our minds — to trouble the waters 
that there may be health in their flow." " 

5. Mr. Phillips's final axiom as an agitator was. 



* Lecture on O'Connell, see Appendix. 

* " Speeches and Lectures," p. 52, 53. 



1 86 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

" The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 
truth." That is, he acted on the platform as a wit- 
ness acts who is put under oath to testify in a case 
at law. " No concealing half of one's convictions 
to make the other half more acceptable ; no denial of 
one truth to gain a hearing for another ; no compro- 
mise ; or, as O'Connell phrased it, ' Nothing is politi- 
cally right which is morally wrong :' " such was his 
dictum. Under this rule he used a plainness of 
speech which appalled because it was unusual. He 
was the one outspoken man in a nation of euphem- 
izers. He called a spade a spade, not " an agricul- 
tural instrument." He insisted that debts were 
debts, not " pecuniary obligations." He said slaver}^ 
is slavery, not " a form of economic subordination." 
The wisdom of this is clear when we remember how 
a soft name softens a sin, and how the bare, hard 
name reveals and brands a sin and sometimes alarms 
and convicts the sinner. Said he : 

" What is the denunciation with which we are charged } It 
is endeavoring, in our faltering human speech, to declare the 
enormity of the sin of making merchandise of men— of sepa- 
rating husband and wife, taking the infant from its mother, and 
selling the daughter to prostitution — of a professedly Christian 
nation denying, by statute, the Bible to every sixth man and 
woman of its population, and making it illegal for * two or three ' 
to meet together except a white man be present ! What is this 
harsh criticism of motives with which we are charged } It is 
simply holding the intelligent and deliberate actor responsible 
for the character and consequences of his acts. Is there any- 
thing inherently wrong in such denunciation or such criticism .? 
This we may claim — we have never judged a man but out of his 
own mouth. We have seldom, if ever, held him to account, 
except for the acts of which he and his own friends were proud. 
All that we ask the world and thoughtful men to note are the 
principles and deeds on which the American pulpit and Ameri- 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 1 8/ 

can public men plume themselves. We always allow our oppo- 
nents to paint their own pictures. Our humble duty is to stand 
by and assure the spectators that what they would take for a 
knave or a hypocrite is really, in American estimation, a Doctor 
of Divinity or Secretary of State." ^ 

In vindicating Daniel O'Connell's kindred plain- 
ness of speech at a later day, he applies his words to 
his own position : 

" O'Connell has been charged with coarse, violent, and intem- 
perate language. The criticism is of little importance, Stupor 
and palsy never understand life. White-livered indifference is 
always disgusted and annoyed by earnest conviction. Protes- 
tants criticised Luther in the same way. It took three centuries 
to carry us far off enough to appreciate his colossal proportions. 
It is a hundred years to-day since O'Connell was born. It will 
take another hundred to put us at such an angle as will enable 
us correctly to measure his stature. Premising that it would 
be folly to find fault with a man struggling for life because his 
attitudes were ungraceful, remembering the Scythian king's 
answer to Alexander, criticising his strange weapon : ' If you 
knew how precious freedom was, you would defend it even with 
axes,' we must see that O'Connell's own explanation is evidently 
sincere and true. He found the Irish heart so cowed and Eng- 
lishmen so arrogant, that he saw it needed an independence 
verging on insolence, a defiance that touched the extremest 
limits, to breathe self-respect into his own race, teach the aggres- 
sor manners, and sober him into respectful attention. It was the 
same with us Abolitionists. Webster had taught the North the 
bated breath and crouching of the slave. It needed with us an 
attitude of independence that was almost insolent ; it needed that 
we should exhaust even the Saxon vocabulary of scorn, to fitly 
utter the righteous and haughty contempt that honest men had 
for man-stealers. Only in that way could we wake the North to 
self-respect, or teach the South thjit at length she had met her 
equal, if not her master. On a broad canvas meant for the 
pubUc square the tiny lines of a Dutch interior would be invisi- 



* ' jpeeches and Lectures,'* pp. 107, 108, 



l88 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

ble. In no other circumstances was the French maxim, * You 
can never make a revolution with rose-water,' more profoundly 
true. The world has hardly yet learned how deep a philosophy 
lies in Hamlet's — 

' Nay, and thou'lt mouth, 
" I'll rant as well as thou.'" » 

Thus, as far as possible, in the Agitator's own lan- 
guage have we outlined his philosophy of agitation. 
It cannot be denied that he gave a reason for the 
faith that was in him, and that he opened a school 
whose influence was continental when he was at the 
head of it. Whether it shall last, as he supposed it 
would, it is for the future to decide. 



* See the Address on O'Connell in the Appendix. 



XI. 

EGERIA. 

It was the peculiar good fortune of Mr. Phillips, 
in his public isolation, to have a congenial home. 
The modest dwelling on Essex Street was more than 
his castle — as the British orator declared every Eng- 
lishman's house to be — it was his sanctuary. When 
Numa, the second King of Rome, undertook to 
pacify the turbulency and refine the manners of the 
ancient city (so runs the legend), he visited a secret 
grotto and held converse with a hidden goddess 
named Egeria, whom he proclaimed his counsellor 
and inspiration and by whose authority he reinforced 
his own. The wife of the democratic monarch of 
the American forum was his Egeria. Few saw her 
— almost as invisible, through illness, as the old 
Roman divinity. The world felt her through him. 
Among his intimates Mr. Phillips was never tired of 
quoting her wise opinions and clever sayings. He 
proudly acknowledged his dependence upon her for 
moral guidance and initiative. Thus, in a letter to 
Elizabeth Pease, he writes : 

" Ann is as usual : little sleep ; very weak ; never goes down- 
stairs ; interested keenly in all good things, and sometimes, I tell 
her, so much my motive and prompter to everything good that I 
fear, should I lose her, there'd be nothing left of me worth your 
loving." ^ 



* " Memorial of Ann Phillips," pp. 14, 15. 



IQO WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Never was there a more genial and intellectual 
atmosphere than that in the chamber of the charm- 
ing Egeria of Wendell Phillips. Her broad, mod- 
ern culture, joined to a deep knowledge of classic 
lore, and stored in a brilliant mind, made her com- 
panionship an education to the favored few who 
penetrated into that rare sick-room, and, as he was 
always avowing, an inspiration to her husband. 

Strange to say, considering the nature and length 
of the sufferer's complaint, the tone was never mor- 
bid at this fireside. Comedy, not tragedy, held the 
stage there, for these two were famous laughers. 
It was a saying of his that " there was more sun 
and fun in Essex Street than anywhere else in Bos- 
ton."^ Of course the laugh faded into seriousness 
when deep topics were considered, when she was to 
be comforted in pain and he was to be strengthened 
for duty. Unceasing were their mutual thoughts, 
constant their acts of self-sacrifice for one another, 
never-ending the counsel they took. She habitually 
discussed with him, before he left home to attend a 
convention or to deliver an important address, those 
aspects of current questions which she thought he 
ought specially to urge or emphasize.^ The two 
were united in their views, or only so much at differ- 
ence as gave added charm and piquancy to their 
intercourse. And he cared more for her approval 
than for all the plaudits of the admiring thousands 
who thrilled beneath his electric speech.' 

To a relative who was familiar with the household 
economy of the Phillipses, we are indebted for a 

' So says Dr. Samuel A. Green, ex-Mayor of Boston, an old friend 
and neighbor of Mr. Phillips. 

2 " Memorial of Ann Phillips," p. 6. » lb. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. I9I 

glimpse into it, as attractive as an interior by Rem- 
brandt : 

" To those whom Mrs. Phillips admitted to visit her freely 
there was seldom any symptom of depression or despondency 
visible. The sunny south chamber, having an outlook down 
Harrison Avenue, was bright with flowers, of which the invalid 
was passionately fond. In midwinter she would have nastur- 
tiums, smilax, and costly exotics, later the brilliant tulips, and 
then the blossoms of spring, the May-flowers and anemones, 
until the garden rose and sweetbrier appeared. All these were 
supplied by loving hands and caused her unceasing delight. 
Nor did her personal appearance often betoken invalidism. She 
had a good color, a strong voice, and a hearty laugh, so that it 
was difficult to think her ill. Conversation never flagged. She 
was eager to hear about and discuss the news of the day, espe- 
cially in Anti-Slavery and reformatory lines ; she took the 
warmest interest in the affairs of her friends, and to the poor 
and needy, who brought stories of sorrow and suffering and 
wrongs endured, her sympathy and aid were freely given, as 
were her husband's. There was no lack of cheer and merri- 
ment and sparkling humor from husband and wife, when two or 
three chosen friends were gathered in the sick-room, and shouts 
of laughter from it resounded through the house. * Gay as the 
gayest bird is Ann T. Greene,' was written of her by a rhyming 
schoolmate when she was a girl, and she continued to merit the 
characterization. She was very fond of music, as was her father 
before her, and, debarred from going to concerts, she found 
pleasure in listening to the strains of the hand-organs which 
were frequently played beneath her window." ^ 

When Mr. Phillips was going out his wife habit- 
ually said : 

'' Wendell, don't forget the organ money !" 
This was as surely left, and as confidently expected 
by the musical mechanic who groimd out the arias of 
sunny Italy in these daily serenades, as the sunrise.' 



' "Memorial of Ann Phillips," pp. 15, 16. 

^ So the author was told by Mrs. Bannard, of Long Branch, N. J. 



192 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Mr. Phillips personally visited the markets every 
morning in search of delicacies to gratify the in- 
valid's appetite, and might be seen wending his way 
homeward with his hands full of parcels " for Ann." ' 
In the Phillips snuggery the meals were always 
served in the wife's apartment, he on this side she on 
that of a tiny table. 

" We eat in French," said Mr. Phillips, referring 
to a habit they had of always conversing" at such 
time in the language of Moliere. 

He was a good eater and a good sleeper, capital 
sanitary points, and the secret, no doubt, of his ex- 
cellent health and spirits. He often quoted and 
commended the sa^'ing of Cobbett, the English 
political economist, that " the seat of civilization is 
the stomach ;" to which he would tack on by way 
of climax, " add an eas}^ conscience and a pillow 
steeped in poppy juice." 

As the colonial women abjured tea in the pre- 
Revolutionary days and discountenanced the king 
by banishing the teapot, so ]Mrs. Phillips would use 
neither cane sugar on her table nor employ cotton 
fabrics in her household, so long as these were the 
product of slave labor. This w^as what she called 
an argumentuin ad Jiominein — logic that would per- 
colate through the pockets into the heads of the 
labor-stealers. 

Mr. Phillips was constantly out in the thick and 
throng of the world. He saw everybody ; had all 
sort of adventures. As his wife could not share his 
experiences at first hand, he made her his companion 
at second-hand. He was eyes and ears for her, and 



> " Memorial," p. 16. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 193 

retailed at home what he got at wholesale abroad. 
No story ever lost anything in his telling of it, and 
in this way he twice enjoyed the manifold events of 
his stirring life. 

Both were passionately fond of children. De- 
prived of any of their own, they adopted the children 
of their friends, with whom their house often ran 
over. Mrs. Phillips would see them when she de- 
nied herself to their elders. And Mr. Phillips had a 
rare faculty of opening or preparing his mail, and 
even of conducting his reading, while simultaneously 
carrying on an animated conversation with these 
little friends, always adapting himself to their level 
of interests and pursuits.* There are many now in 
middle life who held the love of this couple from 
early childhood, and whose gratitude for the bestow- 
ment grows with the lapse of time. That they were 
wise counsellors, the following half-sportive lines, 
written by Mr. Phillips at a later day, on the cars, 
while he was returning with a party from a visit to 
New York, will attest. They were pencilled on the 
fly-leaf of a little book for children called " Specta- 
cles for Young Eyes," which had been requested as 
a souvenir of the jaunt by him (now an honorable 
and useful man) to whom the lines were addressed : 

TO F. H. S. 

Frank 

Better loves to read 
Than to play. 
Hear him with mother plead, 
" Bring me a book from far away." 
Books — 



* Mrs. Bannard is authority for this. 



194 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

The mind's food — 
Are good. 
But never clutch 
Too much. 
Good soul, sound stomach, sound brain. 

These are the chain 

Which holds the world in your hand, 

And govern the land. 

These serve God the best, 

" Till He gives you rest." 

If you'd fill life with true joy, 

My boy, 
While you use these " Spectacles 
For Young Eyes," 
Remember to get strong 
As well as wise.' 

In the summer the town house was inv^ariably ex- 
changed for two or three months of country air and 
green meadows and bright birds, and the time was 
devoted to experimenting with various methods of 
treatment for Mrs. Phillips, all of which proved 
futile.' One of these was mesmerism, and, refer- 
ring to the difficulty of securing a good operator and 
to her husband's being the best she had, the wife 
writes humorously to her English friend, Miss 
Pease ; 

** January 31, 1846. 

" So the poor, devoted Wendell is caught one hour of his busy 
day and seated down to hold my thumbs. I grow sicker every 
year, Wendell lovelier ; I more desponding, he always cheery, 
and telling me I shall live not only to be ' fat and forty,' but fat 
and scolding at eighty 1" 



' Given to the writer by Mrs. J. T. Sargent, whose son is the one 
referred to. 

^ " Memorial of Ann Phillips," p. 16. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. I95 

The letter concludes : 

" Dear Wendell has met with a sad affliction this fall in the 
death of his mother, who left us in November. She was every- 
thing to him — indeed, to all her children ; a devoted mother and 
uncommon woman. ... So poor unworthy I am more of a 
treasure to Wendell than ever, and a pretty frail one. For his 
sake I should love to live ; for my own part I am tired, not of 
life, but of a sick one." ^ 

On the same sheet Mr. Phillips speaks of his be- 
reavement : 

" Dear Ann has spoken of my mother's death. My good, 
noble, dear mother ! We differed utterly on the matter of 
slavery, and she grieved a good deal over what she thought was 
a waste of my time and a sad disappointment to her ; but still 
I am always best satisfied with myself when I fancy I can see 
anything in me which reminds me of my mother. She lived in 
her children, and they almost lived in her, and the world is a 
different one now she is gone." ^ 

With such a mother and such a wife, no wonder 
Wendell F^hillips thought highly of women. A 
man's judgment of women is the infallible index not 
only of his own refinement, but even more of the 
character of his feminine belongings. A mother 
moulds her son, a wife moulds her husband either 
into respect or into disrespect for her whole sex. 
Motive how powerful for lofty thought and a life 
above frivolity ! 

On the death of his mother, Mr. Phillips installed 
in a place of honor among the servants in his house, 
the dearly loved nurse of his childhood,' who now 
became his cook. This woman loved him in return 
with a passionate devotion. She habitually left the 



' *' Memorial of Ann Phillips," pp. x6, 17. 

' /<5., p. 17, ' /in^e, p. 12, 



196 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

door into the kitchen open that she might hear him 
pass and repass, and said : 

" Bless him, there is more music in his footfall 
than in a cathedral organ !" 

Long afterward when she was too old for work he 
placed her in a home of her own. went to see her 
every Saturday with his arms full of remembrances, 
and took care of her until she died.' 

Affairs in this house moved with the precision of 
machinery. At ten o'clock all was whist. When, 
as was often the case, a lecture engagement or a 
public meeting kept him out beyond that hour, he 
let himself in quietly and soon retired. Rising at 
seven in the morning, breakfast was ready at half- 
past seven, dinner was served at two o'clock, and a 
plain supper relieved the kitchen at half-past six. 

Mr. Phillips was never happier than when engaged 
in tinkering. His mechanical tastes have been 
already referred to. When a door was to be eased, 
a fireplace to be overhauled, a window to be tight- 
ened, he went about hammer or saw in hand su- 
premely satisfied. Of the kitchen, however, he 
stood in awe, never intruding there. Nor did he 
meddle with the " help." Characteristically he was 
on hand for service, never for interference. He was 
always amiable and easy about the house. No one 
ever heard him scold — a gentleman off as well as on 
parade, and he was appreciative of all that was 
done for him and was never exacting. Hence the 
servants idolized him and remained for 3'ears. He 
paid the best wages of anybody in the neighborhood, 
and contended that this was the best policy, as it 



' Recollections of Mrs. John T. Sargent (verbal). 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. I97 

promoted contentment and secured a prompt re- 
sponse to all calls. ** Good pay, good service," was 
his oracular remark. 

Mrs. Phillips was a fitful sleeper. Her husband 
occupied a room just back of hers, and she frequently 
aroused him a dozen times in the course of the night. 
The family physician testifies that when calling in 
the early morning he often counted fifteen burned 
matches strewn about, mute witnesses to the number 
of her calls and his answers ! ' And this continued 
more than forty-six years without a murmur on his 
part ! 

He was not a great talker at home. Indeed, Mrs. 
Phillips used to say that *' Silence would reign at 26 
Essex Street unless she broke it." When he came 
in from without, however, and had a budget of news 
to open, he would be all animation. These were the 
occasions when ** laughter, holding both his sides," 
made the house merry. 

Mr. Phillips was a constant student. When he was 
not with his wife, or was not engaged in one or an- 
other of those pottering excursions, he was busy with 
his books or devouring the newspapers, of which he 
took a vast number of all shades of opinion. In pre- 
paring his speeches he went down to the second 
floor, entered his " den," as he called the room 
where he kept his intellectual belongings, locked the 
door, and denied himself to every one, sometimes 
for days, only emerging to eat and sleep. His favor- 
ite position when so engaged was to lie on the sofa, 
where on his back he thought his way through and 



* So Dr. David Thayer, of Boston^ the physician referred to, in- 
formed the writer. 



198 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

out.' He disliked the pen, and a letter ^rom him was 
a supreme token of his regard. " Writing," he used 
to say, " is a mild form of slavery — a man chained 
to an ink-pot." 

Such was the orator at home. 



' The author had these details from the lips of one who passed 
many years under Mr. Phillips's roof. 



XIT. 

CONCERNING A SINGULAR EPIDEMIC. 

It is the judicious remark of one of the annalists 
of the Anti-Slavery movement, that " at the bottom 
of all the wretched casuistry by which men silenced 
the demands of justice in their hearts was this one 
fact — the slaves were black ; or, to use the word 
more deeply freighted with atheistic contempt of 
human nature than any other, 'niggers.' If by a 
miracle the slaves had been suddenly made white, 
all excuses for slavery would have been overthrown, 
and the whole people would have risen up as one 
man to demand its instant abolition. The primary 
fault of the Abolitionists, in popular estimation, was 
their belief in the absolute humanity of the negroes." ^ 

Colorphobia was now epidemic. A black skin de- 
humanized the wearer of it. Negroes were held to 
be cattle, and they were treated like cattle. If a 
black presumed to take the position of a man, or to 
claim any human rights at a hotel, in travelling, in 
business, or even at church, he was pelted back with 
insults and trampled down with oaths. " Jim Crow" 
cars were set apart for them on the railroads, and 
" negro pews" in the house of Him who said, " God 
hath made of one blood all nations of men to serve 
Him." 



' '* Garrison and his Times," pp. 36, 37. 



200 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

The author just quoted tells the following story : 

" A colored merchant from Liberia, a man of intelligence as 
well as wealth, and highly esteemed by Colonizationists, being 
on a visit to Boston, took the opportunity of making the ac 
quaintance of the Abolitionists. As he wished to hear Dr. 
Beecher preach, I invited him, as an act of courtesy to a distin- 
guished foreigner, to take a seat in my pew. On my way out 
of church I encountered the indignant frowns of a large number 
of the congregation, but it was amusing to witness the change 
of countenance that fell upon the advocates of colonization as 

I introduced to them ' Mr. , of Liberia.' They really seemed 

to think his odor was not quite so offensive, after all, as they 
had suspected. The air of Liberia was such a powerful disin- 
fectant ! The slave-holders used to think the atmosphere of 
their home was perfectly delectable when slaves in kitchen, 
dining-room, parlor, and boudoir were as all-pervading as flies ; 
but there was no odor so offensive to them as that imparted to a 
negro when he was set free ; and Northern people in the days 
of slavery, while they required the free negro to occupy a sepa- 
rate apartment on steamboat and rail-car, as being personally 
offensive to white olfactories, never thought of remonstrating 
when the slave-holders (in the hot summer weather, too !) 
claimed for their slaves all the privileges of first-class travellers. 
Strange that in a republican country freedom was so offensive, 
while slavery was so fragrant !" ^ 

All this was infinitel}^ hateful to Wendell Phillips. 
He set himself to resist it by word and deed with 
tireless energy. " Emerson," remarks Mr. Higgin- 
son, " while thoroughly true to the Anti-Slavery 
movement, always confessed to feeling a slight in- 
stinctive aversion to negroes ; Theodore Parker 
uttered frankly his dislike of the Irish. Yet neither 
of tnese had distinctly aristocratic impulses, while 
Phillips had. His conscience set them aside so im- 
peratively that he himself hardly knew that they 



1 << 



Garrison and his Times," pp. loo, loi. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 20I 

were there. He was always ready to be identified 
with the colored people ; always ready to give his 
oft-repeated lecture on O'Connell to the fellow- 
countrymen of that hero ; but in these and all cases 
his democratic habit had the good-natured air of 
some kindly young prince ; he never was quite the 
equal associate that he seemed. The want of it 
never was felt by his associates ; it was in his deal- 
ings with antagonists that the real attitude came out. 
When he once spoke contemptuously of those who 
dined with a certain Boston club which had cen- 
sured him, as 'men of no family,' the real mental 
habit appeared. And in his external aspect and 
bf^aring the patrician air never left him — the air that 
he had in college days, or in that period when, as 
Edmund Quincy delighted to tell, an English visitor 
pointed out to George Ticknor two men walking 
down Park Street, and added the cheerful remark, 
* They are the only men I have seen in your country 
who look like gentlemen.' The two men were the 
Abolitionists Quincy and Phillips, in whose personal 
aspect the conservative Ticknor could see little to 
commend." ^ 

To return to Mr. Phillips's treatment of the satanic 
caste spirit of those days : he brought the question 
before the School Committee of his native city in 
1846. Colored children were not allowed to study 
the three R's with white children, but were sent off 
into hovels and herded in exclusion, to catch their 
learning from the lips of inferior teachers. The very 
text-books seemed to protest against this wicked- 
ness ; for they were printed on white paper in black 



* Obituary notice of Wendell Phillips, p. 15. 



202 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

ink — every one of them an object-lesson on the sub- 
ject of equality. To the petition he stirred, and 
which prayed for abolition of the caste schools, the 
Committee returned a brutal denial. They were in- 
discreet enough to assign w^hat they called their 
" reasons," which were utterly unreasonable, and 
the city solicitor accompanied their response with a 
confirmatory opinion. This gave Mr. Phillips an 
opportunity which he eagerly embraced to dissect 
the attorney's argument, and to rub red pepper in 
the wounds made by his knife.' Nor did he permit 
the matter to rest here. He brought it up again 
and again, made it the " Banquo's ghost" of the 
School Committee, until a few years later they were 
driven to yield the point, and the free schools of 
Boston became free indeed. At the annual meeting 
of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, which 
occurred soon afterward, the pertinacious Abolition- 
ist published his victory in this resolution : 

" Resolved^ That this society rejoices in the abolition of the 
separate colored schools in the city of Boston as the triumph of 
law and justice over the pride of caste and wealth, and recog- 
nizes in it the marked advance of the Anti-Slavery sentiments 
of the State." ^ 

At the same time he appealed to the Legislature 
of Massachusetts to compel the railroads as common 
carriers to admit colored men to the cars their tickets 
demanded, and, in the end, with equal success. 
Meanwhile, he made it a habit to share with any 
black man in whose company he found himself what- 
ever accommodations the unfortunate was forced to 
occupy. Frederick Douglass mentions several in- 



' Vidg Liberator, vol. xv. * Ii>., vol. xxv. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 203 

Stances in which he had this gracious companion- 
ship : 

" On one occasion, for instance, after delivering a lecture to 
the New Bedford Lyceum before a highly cultivated audience, 
when brought to the railroad station (as I was not allowed to 
travel in a first-class car, but was compelled to ride in a filthy 
box called the ' Jim Crow ' car), he stepped to my side in the 
presence of his aristocratic friends, and walked with me straight 
into this miserable dog-car, saying, ' Douglass, if you cannot 
ride with me, I can ride with you.' On the Sound, between 
New York and Newport, in those dark days a colored passenger 
was not allowed abaft the wheels of the steamer, and had to 
spend the night on the forward deck, with horses, sheep, and 
swine. On such trips, when I was a passenger, Wendell Phil- 
lips preferred to walk the naked deck with me to taking a state- 
room. I could not persuade him to leave me to bear the burden 
of insult and outrage alone." ' 

Acts like these admit us to look into Mr. Phillips's 
soul and reveal his moral grandeur. 



* Oration on Wendell Phillips, delivered before the colored people 
of Washington, D. C, in 1884. 



XIII. 

MR. CALHOUN'S IDEA OF EQUILIBRIUM. 

Mr. Garrison happily named John C. Calhoun 
" The Napoleon of Slavery," and he also foretold 
his Waterloo.' The great South Carolinian was a 
man of irreproachable private and infamous polit- 
ical character. He was not a demagogue. He 
never blustered ; and he had the courage of his con- 
victions. A believer in slavery, he claimed for it a 
divine warrant, and, with far more reason, a Consti- 
tutional sanction. His theory of the Union made it 
a mere confederacy formed by sovereign States for 
certain specified purposes, the States continuing to 
be sovereign and reserving all rights not expressly 
delegated.^ Out of this doctrine, under which the 
South was conscientiously tutored, came secession. 
He spelled Nation with a small n, while the two 
other members of the historic senatorial trio — Clay 
and Webster — spelled it with a capital — an orthog- 
raphy which the march of Sherman to the sea and 
the success of Grant at Appomattox eventually en- 
forced. 

But while Mr. Calhoun lived he did two things. 



^ " William Lloyd Garrison, ' vol. iii., p. 217. 

' For an admirable summary of his theory see the article on Calhoun 
by the late Vice-President of the defunct Southern Confederacy, Mr. 
A. H. Stephens, in Johnson's New Universal Cyclopedia. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 205 

He provided the South with a Constitutional door 
of escape from the Union, in case it should lose its 
supremacy. Meanwhile he strove, with magnificent 
energy, to hold the balance of power where it was — 
in the hands of the slave-masters. Had the Repub- 
lic been confined to the thirteen States which formed 
it, this had been an easy task. But it was constantly 
and variously acquiring new Territories of vast ex- 
tent and beyond the original limits. These Terri- 
tories were rapidly peopled, and would surely in the 
near future exert a controlling influence in national 
affairs. What should be the character of the new 
States into which they were to be mapped out ? 
Should they be slave States or free States ? From 
the very start this issue forced itself into Congres- 
sional discussion. It became angrier and angrier 
with the lapse of time and the development of sec- 
tional interests. Efforts were always being made to 
quiet and end the discussion, and always vainly, be- 
cause always by compromise rather than by justice. 
Thus, when the immense domain, then known as 
Louisiana, was acquired from France, just as soon as 
the portion of it which had St. Louis for a capital, 
had been colonized by slave-holders, it applied for 
admission into the Union under the name of Missouri, 
with a State constitution which not only established 
slavery, but prohibited its abolition. The free States 
protested. The strife raged during two bitter years. 
The South won the battle, but tossed to the sulky 
North a sop of comfort in the shape of the " Mis- 
souri Compromise," by which slavery was prohibited 
in so much of the outlying French purchase as lay 
north of latitude 36° 30', historically known as " Ma- 
son and Dixon's line." 



2o6 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

That was in 1820. For a quarter of a century it 
secured for the oligarchy the undisputed possession 
of the Government. All this while, however, immi- 
g-ration was pouring into the Northern States, in- 
creasing their population and wealth, which were 
further enlarged by natural growth, while the do- 
mestic economy of the Southern States cramped them 
and kept them stationary. Moreover, the Terri- 
tories were constantly pre-empted, mainly from the 
more enterprising North and by settlers who had no 
objection to slavery in the South, but did object to 
the introduction of the system into their new abode, 
because it brought them, as working people, into 
juxtaposition with a servile class. This again trans- 
formed the Territories into a debatable ground. The 
South feared that the North would soon predomi- 
nate. To preserve the political equilibrium (a con- 
venient phrase which meant the concentration of 
power in the slavocracy), Mr. Calhoun began to 
scheme for the addition of new slave territory, and 
Texas, an empire in itself, was demanded. 

The North, and the Whig party in particular, pro- 
tested. Conventions were held here, there, every- 
where. The annexation of Texas was pronounced 
unconstitutional and revolutionary. Statesmen like 
John Quincy Adams, merchants like Abbott Law- 
rence, asserted that the success of the plot would be 
equivalent to a dissolution of the Union, and advised 
forcible resistance. ' Conservatives suddenly became 
radicals and Unionists clamored for contingent dis- 
union. The nation was a great debating society. 



' Vidg Morse's " Life of John Q. Adams," in ioco, and Hill's 
** Memoir of Abbott Lawrence," p. 21. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 20/ 

and the subject which no one was to talk about 
became everybody's theme. 

At this crisis the Abohtionists were neither silent 
nor idle. Their presses struck off tons of matter. 
Their meetings attracted universal attention. Their 
speeches were cheered to the echo. Their aggres- 
sive spirit, their policy of carrying the war into 
Africa, their logical position, in noble contrast with 
the contortions of professional politicians, blowing 
hot and blowing cold, extorted the admiration of 
their bitterest opponents. They were the only per- 
sons at the North who clearly saw the nature of the 
contest, who recognized the impossibility of lasting 
union on the present basis, and who distinctly an- 
nounced their purpose never to intermit their efforts 
until slavery, the prolific cause of all the disturb- 
ance, should be overthrcrwn. 

"As to disunion," remarked Mr. Phillips, " it 
must and will come. Calhoun wants it at one end 
of the Union, Garrison wants it at the other. It is 
written in the counsels of God. Meantime, let all 
classes and orders and interests unite in using the 
present hour to prevent the annexation of Texas." ' 
For he knew that if Texas was not admitted the 
South would secede and thus relieve the North from 
all complicity. And he hoped that if Texas were 
admitted, the North would act as it now talked and 
declare the Union at an end. This was the motive 
of his course at this moment. Besides, the very 
controversy was a public education. The country 
was awakened to see the drift of affairs. Every 
speech on either side was another nail driven in the 



' Vid( Liberator, vol. xv., p. 177. 



208 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

coffin of the S3'Stem he hated. For tne one thing 
that slavery could not abide was examination. There 
was a widespread feeling at the North that the South 
would retreat before the storm of words which beat 
open the plot and the plotters. Perhaps this was 
the explanation of the brave attitude of the Whig 
leaders — they did not believe they would be called 
to transmute words into deeds. They little knew 
the South ! 

Mr. Phillips did know it. Being swayed by posi- 
tive convictions himself, he recognized the conscien- 
tious deviltry of Mr. Calhoun. Men of positive con- 
victions die — they never 3rield. Therefore, judging 
the Southern leader by himself, he foresaw his per- 
sistence and foretold his success. He had the power, 
why should he not have his way ? Early in 1845 
Mr. Phillips wrote Elizabeth Pease : " Well, Texas 
you'll see is coming in. We always said it would 
and were laughed at." ' 

The prophecy was fulfilled. On the last day of 
February, only a few days after the date of Mr. 
Phillips's letter, Mr. Calhoun, having failed to carry 
the Treaty of Annexation through the Senate by the 
requisite two-thirds majority, accomplished his pur- 
pose by admitting the new slave State by the uncon- 
stitutional expedient of a joint resolution of the two 
Houses of Congress, and provided, besides, that it 
should have the option of subdividing its immense 
area into four slave States as soon as it should have 
sufficient population. Nay, while this legislation 
was pending, and in the face of the intense adv^erse 
feeling in the North, he engineered the admission of 



^ Quoted in ** William Lloyd Garrison," vol. iii., p, 137. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 209 

Florida into the Union, side by side with Iowa, a 
slave State paired with a free State, and saw to it 
that the constitution of Florida, like that of Mis- 
souri, twenty-five years before, should contain a 
clause making slavery perpetual. 

So, then, that had occurred which the chiefs of 
the Whig party had declared a sufficient reason for 
leaving the Union ; nay, as ipso facto an act of dis- 
solution. What did they do ? They backed down 
and bowed their way out of the mighty presence 
with Eastern salaams. They ate their words, and 
went in for an era of " good feeling." Despite this 
craven behavior of trusted men, the agitation had 
aroused the North. The apparent success of the 
South was another step toward its ultimate destruc- 
tion. It was a Bunker Hill victory. The Aboli- 
tionists gained and held a larger following than 
ever before. Mr. Phillips was almost as content 
with Mr. Calhoun's maintenance of his equilibrium 
as he would have been with his failure. For 
the new settlement would not stay settled. The 
war with Mexico followed the annexation of Texas. 
As the result additional Territories were ac- 
quired.' These at once raised the eternal question 
of Pro-Slavery and Anti-Slavery. Mr. Wilmot, 
of Pennsylvania, moved and carried through the 
House of Representatives a proviso (hence called 
the " Wilmot proviso") that slavery should never 
exist in any part of the domain just wrung from 
Mexico, which, however, the Senate refused to 
adopt.^ In opposing the bill in this latter body, Mr. 
Calhoun rose and pointed out that the slave States 



' Viz., New Mexico and California, "^ In February, 1847. 



210 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

were now in a minority in the Lower House and in 
the Electoral College, and that in the Senate they 
were evenly balanced against the free States — four- 
teen to fourteen. He added : 

" Sir, the day that the balance between the two sections of 
the country — the slave-holding States and the non-slave-holding 
States — is destroyed, is a day that will not be far removed from 
political revolution, anarchy, civil war, and widespread disaster. 
The balance of this system is in the slave-holding States. They 
are the conservative portion, always have been the conservative 
portion, always will be the conservative portion, and, with a due 
balance on their part, may, for generations to come, uphold this 
glorious Union of ours. But if this policy should be carried out, 
woe, woe I say, to this Union I" ^ 

Apparently this was the North's opportunity. 
Had the free States then stood together, one of two 
things would have happened : either the South would 
have precipitated secession, or slavery would have 
been hopelessly confined within the limits it then 
occupied. In one case the North would not have 
been ready for the issue ; in the other, slavery would 
have been, as Charles II. apologized for being, " an 
unconscionable time in dying, "and the whole nation 
would have been convulsed b}' its death-throes for a 
hundred years. Hindsight is better than foresight. 
God is wiser than man. The Almighty ruled and 
overruled, prolonging the struggle until the North 
was ripe for the tremendous crisis, and then admin- 
istered to the hoary iniquity the death-stroke. 

Hence the ** furioso" utterance of Calhoun fright- 
ened the mercantile and political classes of the North 
into their wonted servility. They cringed and 
begged pardon, reminding one of Sterne's donkey, 



' Vide Liberator ^ vol. xvii., p. 34. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS, 2il 

whose attitude invited abuse, and seemed i<^ say, 
" Don't kick me ! but if you will you may ; it is per- 
fectly safe." But the renewed agitation rendered 
further service to liberty ; it made more Abolition- 
ists, and incensed many into the ranks of the rising 
political Anti-Slavery parties. There were indica- 
tions that there would one day be a North. 



XIV. 

INCIDENTS. 

Through the years whose more public history 
we have outlined in the previous chapter, Mr. Phil- 
lips was variously active. As often as any fresh 
occurrence gave him a text he preached a sermon 
whose conclusion was sure to be Delenda est Cathar- 
go I For instance, his whilom opponent at Con- 
cord, Squire Hoar,' had been sent by Massachusetts 
to South Carolina to test in the Federal courts in 
that State the constitutionality of a statute under 
which colored seamen of Massachusetts had been 
flung into jail for presuming to land at Charleston. 
When Mr. Hoar appeared on the scene he was in- 
sulted and expelled — as though he had been himself a 
" nigger." Mr. Phillips thereupon urged the Bunker 
Hill State to demand of the President an enforce- 
ment of Mr. Floar's plain constitutional right to re- 
side in the Fort Moultrie State : in default of which 
he asked the Legislature to authorize the Governor 
to proclaim the Union at an end, recall the Congres- 
sional delegation, and provide for the State's foreign 
relations.^ Instead of adopting this heroic remedy, 
Massachusetts was content to bluster and — do noth- 
ing. 

But alas ! the State which did nothing officially to 

^ Ante, p. 129, sqq. ' Vide Liberator^ vol. xv., p. 19. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 21 3 

resent an indignity, did much through certain of her 
recreant sons to aid and comfort the slave-masters. 
Slaves were constantly making their way to the 
North in ways which, if we could trace them, would 
transform these pages into martyrology. One of 
these black heroes secreted himself, in 1846, on board 
a Massachusetts vessel bound from New Orleans for 
Boston. He was discovered, — chained, — brought on 
to the Puritan City — transferred there to another 
Massachusetts ship, bound South, — carried back to 
New Orleans, — and remanded to slavery. Massachu- 
setts vessels, Massachusetts ship-owners, and Massa- 
chusetts captains playing the part of slave-hounds ! ' 
But if the State had sons to stain, it also had sons 
to vindicate its outraged honor. Faneuil Hall was 
secured. The Abolitionists filled it. The venerable 
John Quincy Adams presided. The philanthropist, 
Dr. S. G. Howe, recited the abhorrent facts. John 
A. Andrew (afterward the great war governor) pre- 
sented ringing resolutions. Charles Sumner (now 
enlisted for the war against slavery) made one of the 
speeches ; and Wendell Phillips followed, and gib- 
beted the names of the miscreants, John H. Pierson, 
the owner, and James W. Hannum, the captain, to 
eternal infamy. " Let us proclaim," said he, " that 
law or no law. Constitution or no Constitution, 
humanity shall be paramount in Massachusetts. I 
would send a voice from Faneuil Hall that should 
reach every hovel in South Carolina, and say to the 
slaves, * Come here and find in Massachusetts an 
asylum.* '* ^ 



^ Austin's " Life and Times of Wendell Phillips," pp. 130, 131. 
"^ I^., pp. 131, 132. 



214 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Daniel Webster was horrified at this. " You that 
prate of disunion," he said, " do 3^ou not know that 
disunion is Revolution?" 

"Yes," retorted the Agitator, "we do know it, 
and we are for a revolution — a revolution in the char- 
acter of the American Constitution !" ' Well, it 
came. 

The Church then said this was heresy, and the 
State then said this was treason. To-day both 
Church and State pronounce it magnificent — Chris- 
tianity and patriotism combined. 

Mr. Phillips found time amid these exciting hap- 
penings for other activities. One day he went, with 
Mr. Garrison, before a committee of the Legislature 
to argue against capital punishment. His speech is 
a masterpiece on that side of the question." He 
believed with Bulwer, that '* the worst use you can 
put a man to is to hang him." Another day, he bore 
witness to the superiority of phonography (then just 
come into use) over the old method of reporting : 
phonography, which snatched the words verbatim 
from his lips,^ and then bade the telegraph flash the 
lightning he spoke around the globe. In the first ot 
his speeches thus reported (a speech delivered on 
December 29th, 1846, at the Anti-Slavery Bazaar, in 
Faneuil Hall) occurs a passage in which he scores 
the Church : 

" Is the pulpit forever to dwell in the graves of the Jews ? 
The scepticism of Athens is not found in America — that special 
scepticism which Paul attacked, when he stood on Mars Hill. 
He directed his words against living sins. We ask of the suc- 



' Vide Liberator, vol, xvii., p. 7. 

^ lb., vol. xiv., p. 23 ; xv., p. 3. ^ lb., vol. xvii., p. 7. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 21$ 

cessors of Paul that they take his thunderbolt and hurl it, not at 
the graves of the Pharisees, but at the palaces of the tyrant." 

He quotes approvingly the sa)dng of Dr. Arnold 
that the Church exists ' ' to put down all moral evils 
within or without her own body ;" and then pro- 
ceeds : 

*' Anti-Slavery societies ought not to have any raison d'etre. 
The Church should do our work. But she will have nothing to 
do with current sins. She has the sword of the Spirit, but glues 
it in the scabbard ! She puts on the breastplate of righteous- 
ness, but never goes into battle ! She has her feet shod with the 
Gospel of peace, but will not travel !" ' 

In January, 1847, Theodore Parker took a house 
ih Exeter Place, directly in the rear of Mr. Phillips's 
residence — ^a happy occurrence for both. They dif- 
fered radically in their religious views ; Parker being 
an ultra-Unitarian, while Phillips clung to the old 
faith. But they had much in common. With both 
liberty was a passion. They were alike, too, in their 
devotion to letters ; and still nearer akin in their 
pitiful ministry to every form of suffering and sor- 
row. Parker was a polyglot man — spoke or read 
fifteen languages. A wit of the day speaks of cer- 
tain learned men " who know everything except 
how to apply it.''' Parker knew how to apply what 
he knew. He had a luxurious library and was never 
happier than when throned among his books — save 
when he was at work among and for his fellows. 
He was fond of animals — they were a hobby. Bears 
were his special pets. He said they were great, 
humorous children [Did he think them fit to hug?] ; 
and imagined they had a wary Scotch vein in them. 

' ViJ<r Liberator, vol. xvii., p. 7. 



2l6 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

His home was full of bears in plaster, ivory, wood 
(from Berne), and in seal metal. It was a short and 
economical way to his heart to fetch him an odder 
bear than usual. Mr. Phillips gave him a French 
caricature of the Revolution of 1848, represent- 
ing the chief characters in the shape of bears— 
which he straightway raised conspicuously over his 
bureau.* 

The intimacy between these men became as close 
as though they had been joined in the marriage re- 
lation — there was a union of souls. Mr. Phillips has 
told how often, as he looked from his own chamber 
window late at night, when some lecture engage- 
ment had brought him home in ** the wee sma' hours 
ayont the twal'," he saw the unquenched light burn- 
ing in Parker's study — " that unflagging student ever 
at work." Then he would turn away, murmuring : 
*' The trophies of Miltiades will not let me sleep !" ^ 
Ah, Mr. Phillips, go to bed without envy in your 
heart ! Those midnight carousals with books finally 
killed Theodore Parker. Late hours are as poison- 
ous to students as the hemlock was to Socrates. 

In the spring of the year when Parker became his 
neighbor, Mr. Phillips, at his own expense, published 
a pamphlet in which he reviewed with great acute- 
ness and a lavish display of legal learning, an able 
book by Mr. Lysander Spooner, on " The Uncon- 
stitutionality of Slavery." ^ This was his third im- 
portant contribution to the current discussion of the 



' " Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker," by John Weiss, 
vol. i., p. 287. 

2 •' Memorial of Ann Phillips," p. 18. 

' This pamphlet may be founJ in the Boston Puolic Library — the 
author's own copy. 



WENDELL I'HILLLPS. 21^ 

character of that compact.' The large edition was 
soon disposed of, and others followed. Simultane- 
ously his addresses treated the same issue, but in a 
less technical and mor^ popular manner. As the 
ancients had a saying that all roads led to Rome, so 
now his utterances, whether from the press or the 
platform, all ended with the slogan : " No Union 
with Slave-holders." 

It was at this period, also, that Mr. Phillips met 
Eliza Garnaut. She was one of those angels in 
human form who sometimes (alas ! not often) come 
into our experience to renew our confidence in our 
kind, and to show us how nearly allied the human 
may be to the divine. This lady was of Welsh 
birth. She had married a Frenchman, and came 
with him to Boston. He soon died, leaving her 
v^ith an only child, a girl. Without means, she man- 
aged to support herself and daughter ; and in addi- 
tion gave time and money to the destitute around 
about her — made herself a common mother. Wher- 
ever there was poverty, — misfortune, — grief, — down- 
fall — there she stood, a modern good Samaritan. 
Some of the noblest people in Boston made her their 
almoner. Mr. Phillips loved her as a sister and 
looked up to her as a saint. He was always helping 
her with counsel and cash. When, in 1849, she fell 
a victim to the cholera, through her unselfish devo- 
tion to others, he adopted her daughter as his own, 
and Phoebe Garnaut became for a few delightful 
years to all concerned, Phoebe Phillips.* A relative 



* Antey pp. 143 sqq. 

2 " Memorial of Ann Phillips," p. 18. For a beautiful tribute to 
Mrs. Garnaut, from the pen of Mr. Phillips, see Liberty Bell^ox 1851. 



2l8 WENDEIJ. PHILLIPS. 

of Mrs. Phillips speaks of the welcome the child, then 
twelve years old, met with : " She was a constant 
joy to both — * Ann busies herself with lessons and 
French exercises as when she herself went to school,' 
wrote Mr. Phillips ; who himself took pleasure in 
directing the girl's education, and found in her a 
bright and loving companion, until marriage took 
her away to another city, and finally to a foreign 
land." ' 

The hatred then felt for the Abolitionists among 
those who did not and would not understand their 
motives and aims is now incredible. After nearly 
twenty years of effort, and notwithstanding the 
always rising tide of Anti-Slavery sentiment, these 
pioneers of progress carried their lives in their hands 
within the shadow of their own homes. One day as 
Mr. Phillips turned the corner and walked toward 
his house, he passed two gentlemen — they seemed 
such in dress and carriage. One remarked to the 
other in a tone evidently meant to be overheard and 
with a jerk of his head in the direction of the orator : 

" I would like to put a bullet through that man's 
heart !" 

"Benevolent, wasn't it?" was his comment in 
mentioning it to a friend.* 

Adhering as he did to the religion of Christ, and 
feeling the need of communion with the divine Liber- 
ator, he was wont at this time to meet on Sundays 
with a few like-minded men and women in private 



' " Memorial of Ann Phillips," p. i8. Miss Garnaut married, in 
iS6o, Mr. George W. Smalley, the well-known London correspondent 
of the New York Tribune. 

"^ The Rev. A. J. Gordon, of Boston, in New York Independent^ 
April 17th, 1884. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 219 

houses, after the apostolic example, to observe the 
holy service of the Lord's Supper,'— this infidel ! 
Thus he got fresh strength and courage to battle 
against overwhelming odds in behalf of the Golden 

Rule. 

In 1848 an address to America against slavery came 
from Scotland, signed by forty thousand women. 
It played a prominent part in the various Anti- 
Slavery gatherings of the year. On one of these 
occasions, Mr. Phillips paid a tribute to this noble 
host, and, incidentally, as well to the faithfulness of 
their sisters on this side of the water : 

" It was from a woman's lips (referring to Elizabeth Herrick) 
that the Abolitionists of the old world first heard the doctrine 
and learned the lesson of immediate emancipation. Women's 
voices, God bless them ! have ever been clear in animating for 
the conflict and in pointing out the way." " 

In January, 1849, Mr. Phillips made an aggressive 
speech at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts 
Anti-Slavery Society in which he reviewed the local 
history of the cause since his adhesion to it. He 
alluded to a gathering in Faneuil Hall, in 1837, 
which provoked the Garrison mob, when Harrison 
Gray Otis said that he had heard the Abolitionists 
in their madness, put the Bible above the Statute- 
book, and when Peleg Sprague endeavored to create 
Pro-Slavery feeling by pointing to the portrait of 
Washington, and calling him "that slave-holder." 
He referred to the encouragement given to the mur- 
derers of Lovejoy, at Alton, by "that infamous 

» Vide Joseph Cook in his Monday lecture on Wendell Phillips, 
Boston. February 14th, 1884. Reported in New York Independent, 
February 14th, 1884. 

^ Vide Liberator^ vol. xviii „ p 19* 



220 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

attorney-general, James Trecothic Austin." He 
then proceeded to call the roll of the Boston 
churches : 

•* Where is Hubbard Winslow ? Teaching that a minister's 
rule of duty, as to what he should teach and preach, is ' what 
the brotherhood will allow and protect.' Where is the pulpit of 
the ' Old South ' ? Sustaining slavery as a Bible institution. 
Where is Park Street ? Refusing to receive within its walls, for 
funeral services, the body of the only martyr the Orthodox Con- 
gregationalists of New England have had, Charles T. Torrey,* 
and of whom they were not worthy. Where is Essex Street 
church ? Teaching that there are occasions when the Golden 
Rule is to be set aside. Where is Federal Street church ? 
Teaching that silence is the duty of the North with respect to 
slavery, and closing its doors to the funeral eulogy of the Aboli- 
tionist Pollen, the bosom friend of .the only man who will make 
Federal Street pulpit to be remembered, William Ellery Chan- 
ning. And I might ask, where are the New South and Brattle 
Street ? but they are 7iot .'" " 

This speech made a sensation. It stabbed the 
ecclesiastical traitors to liberty with interrogation 
marks — no wonder they gasped out their rage. 

The annexation of Texas and the successful war 
against ill-used Mexico had enlarged, actually and 
even more prospectively, the area of the South, and 
the value of the slaves was enhanced. According 
to the Richmond Enquirer, male negroes were now 
worth "seven hundred dollars around."^ When 
seven hundred dollars funded in ebony took to its 
heels and ran away, the slave-masters felt in their 



* Mr. Torrey was a Northern clergyman and Abolitionist who had 
been imprisoned and martyred at the South for aiding slaves to 
escape. 

' Vide Liberator, vol. xix. , 2d week in February, 

' Compare Liberator^ vol. xxvii., p. I. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 221 

pockets a vacuum which they, Hke nature, ab« 
horred. Their two-footed property kept doing this. 
And when the seven hundred dollars' worth of flesh 
and blood reached the North, the Abolitionists saw 
only the man or woman and could not see the prop- 
erty — no, not with a magnifying'-glass. This ten- 
dency of this peculiar kind of value to scoot (always 
Northward), coupled with the poor eyesight of 
growing numbers up here, which disabled them from 
seeing the flight, kept the lords of the plantation in 
a condition of chronic fretfulness. Worse yet, there 
was a regular ** underground railroad" in the North, 
with stations, conductors, and free cars, operated (so 
the South learned) for the very purpose of spiriting 
away as many embodiments of the aforesaid seven 
hundred dollars as cared to ride on it. Toward the 
end of May, 1849, several of these *' chattels per- 
sonal" suddenly appeared in Boston, en route for 
Canada, and stopped for refreshments at Faneuil 
Hall — the restaurant of liberty. One of these was 
" Box" Brown; so called, because he had escaped 
from Virginia in a box as merchandise — not a proper 
method of shipping live stock, for it nearly proved 
his coffin. Two others were William and Ellen 
Craft, husband and wif-e. She being almost white, 
had disguised herself in male attire as an invalid 
seeking medical treatment at the North, while her 
darker husband figured in the role of her negro 
** boy" — all of which was quite orthodox and consti- 
tutional, as it should seem. Well, Wendell Phillips 
fed them in Faneuil Hall, and amid thunders of ap- 
proval cried : 

*• "We say in behalf of these hunted beings, whom God created, 
and whom law-abiding Webster and Winthrop have sworn shall 



222 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

not find shelter in Massachusetts, — we say that they may make 
their little motions, and pass their little laws, in Washington, but 
that Faneuil Hall REPEALS them, in the name of humanity and 
the old Bay State !" ' 

With which defiance we ring down the curtain. 



* Vide Liberator^ vol. xix., p. 90. 



XV. 

THE devil's gospel. 

Mr. Phillips commenced the year 1850 by the 
delivery of a lecture before the Mercantile Library 
Association of Boston, on the ** Philosophy of Re- 
form.** The audience was immense ; the subject 
one with which the lecturer was en rapport ; the re- 
sult, the introduction of his sentiments where they 
had not been heard before.' 

At this date the national situation may be thus 
summarized : 

California stood knocking at the door of the Union 
for admission as a free State — a new danger to Mr. 
Calhoun's equilibrium. The " Free Soil party," 
child and successor of the old Liberty party, the 
latest political coalition against the extension and 
domination of slavery, had come into the field in 
1848, when it cast an ominous vote for its Presiden- 
tial candidate, and was now vigorously preparing to 
better the record in the approaching canvas of 1852. 
The Whig party was divided into two warring fac- 
tions, the "Conscience" Whigs, who were unalter- 
ably opposed to the further spread of the ** peculiar 
institution," and the " Cotton" Whigs, who put the 
desire to make money in the place of conscience, and 
went up and down crying ** Peace, peace" when 



' Vide Liberator^ vol. xx., p. 7. 



224 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

there was no peace. The Democratic party s\ai$ 
animated and controlled by the South, and was com- 
posed of the slave-holders, booted and spurred to 
ride, and of donkey Northerners, saddled and bridled 
to be ridden. The Abolitionists were still few, but 
made up for their lack of numbers by their sleepless 
activity. The}^ were the only consistent and un- 
compromising foes of slavery, — the only ones who 
contended not only for its restriction but for its de- 
struction ; which they were enabled to do because 
they stood outside of all parties, untrammelled by 
Constitutional limitations ; and they were hated and 
feared because of their position on the morals of the 
case. The plantation barons were sulky. Their 
biped ** property" had mastered enough astronomy 
to distinguish the North Star, and had mustered 
enough manhood to run for it. Meanwhile, large 
sections of the free States covertly co-operated with 
the fugitives, and openly refused to return them to 
the house of bondage. The scene was one of be- 
wildering confusion — dizzy as a dance of dervishes. 

In these circumstances, Mr. Clay stole a leaf from 
the devil's gospel — he proposed a compromise. 
This was the unfailing resource of the " Artful 
Dodgers" who substituted expedients for justice, 
and who imagined that statesmanship was shown by 
trimming. As though God could be hoodwinked 
by men ! As though the crater of Vesuvius could 
be stuffed up with a tuft of cotton ! Either Calhoun 
was right or Phillips was right. If Calhoun was 
right, slavery was a benign institution, and had a 
claim to be domesticated everywhere — like the cotton 
it produced. If Phillips was right, slavery was " the 
sum of all villanies," and had no claim to be tolerated 



WENDELL PHILLIPS, 225 

anywhere. Between these two positions there was 
no logical standing-place. The turmoil of fifty years 
originated in the inability or unwillingness of this 
country to recognize this plain fact — in the attempt 
to make two and two count five instead of four. In 
questions of mere expediency, compromise is what 
Macaulay termed it, " the essence of politics." All 
parties agree to give up something to carry a com- 
mon point. But when fundamental right and wrong 
are involved, compromise is a compounding of 
felony. It is like promising the burglar who haa 
broken into your house and slain your children, that 
you will not prosecute him for murder if he will re- 
store the family plate. 

Mr. Clay's programme was, substantially, this : to 
admit California as a free State ; to organize the 
Territories stolen from Mexico without raising ths 
question of slavery, leaving them to decide that ques 
tion for themselves ; to gratify Northern sentiment, 
not by abolishing slavery in the District of Colum- 
bia, but by forbidding the sale of slaves in the Wash- 
ington markets ; and to satisfy Southern cupidity by 
the passage of a stringent law for the return of fugi- 
tive slaves. Like any other vendor of patent nos- 
trums, he expatiated on the advantage of such a 
measure : It would kill the Free Soil party ; for they 
only claimed what was now conceded, — the abolition 
of the slave-trade under the shadow of the Capitol, 
and the non-extension of slavery into the Territories 
under Governmental auspices ; it would quiet the 
South ; for their property was secured at the North 
as well as at home, while there were no exclusive 
fences in the Territories. 

The great compromiser, after the habit of his kind. 



226 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

forgot that God was not dead. He also Ignored the 
Abolitionists, who were as hot against slavery in the 
slave States as they were against its introduction 
into the Territories. Of course, therefore, Mr. Phil- 
lips scouted the juggle. Nor was Mr. Calhoun 
much better pleased with it ; for Mr. Clay's panacea 
did not preserve his equilibrium. With California 
admitted, there would be sixteen free, and only fifteen 
slave States. Besides, believing that slaves were 
legitimate property, he held, logically enough, that 
this kind of possession should go wherever a horse 
or a plough or a bond might be carried — had a right 
to the same protection. But before the uncompro- 
mising Southerner could develop his opposition, 
death snatched him away.* 

While Clay's legislation was pending, all eyes were 
turned upon Daniel Webster. Would he throw the 
weight of his great name in the scale of compro- 
mise ? Would he now lead the " Conscience" Whigs 
and create a North ? It was an hour of hope and of 
fear. On March 7th, 1850, Mr. Webster slowly rose 
in the Senate, faced South instead of North, and, 
speaking with the ponderous deliberation character- 
istic of his oratory, advocated the Kentuckian's bill 
without an if or an and, and especially announced 
his purpose to carry out the fugitive-slave clause 
" with all its provisions, to the furthest extent." 

It was the completest, saddest, most disastrous 
surrender ever made. The favorite son of New 
England thought to secure the Presidency by this 
act. In reality he committed both moral and politi- 
cal suicide. True, his advocacy carried the com- 



' Mr. Calhoun died March 31st, 1S50. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 22; 

promise measure through the Senate and through 
the Plouse and made it law. True, he was thanked 
for his course by the representatives of Massachu- 
settfs commerce, letters, theology, and law, in ait 
open letter which Rufus Choate, William Appleton, 
George Ticknor, W. H. Prescott, Professor Moses 
Stuart, and the Rev. Dr. Leonard Woods, signed, 
with seven hundred other dough faces. ^ But he dis- 
gusted the South itself, which refused to give him 
even the empty honor of a nomination at the Whig 
Convention, a year or two later. And he alienated 
those Anti-Slavery Whigs who had believed in him 
and followed him, but who now swore <^/ him instead 
of by him. Clothed with shame and gnawed by 
chagrin, he died not long afterward, and was sepul- 
chred in dishonor. By a striking coincidence, his 
colleague in infamy, Henry Clay, less enlightened and 
therefore less guilty, by a few months preceded 
him to the grave. ^ Unhappily their juggle " still 
lived." 

But the measure intended to quench only inflamed 
the fire. It was popularly known by its most famous 
(and infamous) provision, as the ** Fugitive Slave 
Law." This was the special feature that aroused 
the wrath of the North. For this made slave-hunt- 
ing a duty and sought to transform every freeman 
into a slav^e-catcher. It placed the liberty of any 
colored man who might be claimed and seized any- 
where at the merc}^ of any commissioner, marshal, 
or clerk of any Federal court ; nay, of any collector 
of customs, or any postmaster. It affixed to the res- 



^ Vide Liberator, vol. xx., pp. 55, 57, 62. 

' Webster died October 24th, 1852 ; Clay, June 2gth, 1852. 



228 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

cue, or attempted rescue, or even to the harboring, 
of such an one, a fine of one thousand dollars, to- 
gether with six months' imprisonment/ 

This atrocious statute, and Mr. Webster's connec- 
tion with it, were indignantly condemned in Faneuil 
Hall, on March 25th, 1850, by a vast concourse of 
citizens. The Hon. Samuel E. Sewall presided. 
Theodore Parker spoke, and was followed by Wen- 
dell Phillips, who riddled the recreant New England 
statesman, as years before in the same hall he had 
the smaller renegade who defended the Alton mur- 
derers.^ 

But the Abolitionists did not have it all their own 
way. The legislation at Washington resurrected 
the mob spirit, and 1850 repeated 1835. The annual 
meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, held 
in New York, in May, is an illustration. Its advent 
was heralded by a satanic outburst from the press 
of the city, invoking riot and instigating violence. 
A crowd of roughs, headed by one Captain Rynders, 
a typical bully, took possession of the galleries of 
the Broadway Tabernacle, where the opening ses- 
sion was held, and set disorder afoot. Amid con- 
stant interruptions and to an accompaniment of in- 
sults spiced with profanity the earlier speakers inter- 
jected their words. Then uprose a seedy-looking 
mobocrat, who undertook to prove that the negroes 
were not men but monkeys. Frederick Douglass 
came forward and said : 

" The gentleman who has just spoken has under- 
taken to prove that the blacks are not human beings. 



' The law is given in the Liberator, vol. xx., p. 153. 
2 Vide Liberator, vol. xx., ist week in April. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 2^9 

He has examined our whole conformation, from top 
to toe. I cannot follow him in his argument. I will 
assist him in it, however. I offer myself for exami- 
nation. A??i la man f 

The audience responded with a thunderous affirm- 
ative, which Captain Rynders sought to break by 
exclaiming : " You are not a black man ; you are 
only half a nigger." ** Then," replied Mr. Doug- 
lass, turning upon him with the blandest of smiles, 
and an almost affectionate obeisance, " I am half- 
brother to Captain Rynders !" He would not deny 
that he was the son of a slave-holder, born of South- 
ern " amalgamation ;" a fugitive, too, like Kossuth 
— " another half-brother of mine" (to Rynders). He 
spoke of the difficulties thrown in the way of indus- 
trious colored people at the North, as he had himself 
experienced — this by way of answer to Horace 
Greeley, who had recently complained of their in- 
efficiency and dependence. Criticism of the editor 
of the Tribune being grateful to Rynders, a political 
adversary, he added a word to Douglass's against 
Greeley. ** I am happy," said Douglass, " to have 
the assent of my half-brother here," pointing to 
Rynders, and convulsing the audience with laugh- 
ter. After this Rynders, finding how he was played 
with, took care to hold his peace ; but some one of 
Rynders's company in the gallery undertook to in- 
terrupt the speaker. " It's of no use," said Mr. 
Douglass, ** I've Captain Rynders here to back me. 
We were born here," he said, finally, " we are not 
dying out, and we mean to stay here. We made 
the clothes you have on, the sugar you put into your 
tea. We would do more if allowed." " Yes," said 
a voice in the crowd, " you would cut our throats 



230 WENDELL PHILLlPs;. 

for US." " No," was the quick response, " but we 
would cut your hair for you." 

Douglass concluded his triumphant remarks by 
calling upon the Rev. Samuel Ward, editor of the 
Impartial Citizen, to succeed him. " All eyes," says 
an eye-witness, ** were instantly turned to the back 
of the platform, or stage, rather, so dramatic was the 
scene ; and there, amid a group, stood a large man, so 
black that, as Wendell Phillips said, when he shut 
his eyes you could not see him. As he approached, 
Rynders exclaimed : ' Well, this is the original nig 
ger ! ' 'I've heard of the magnanimity of Captain 
Rynders,* said Ward, * but the half has not been 
told me ! ' And then he went on with a noble voice, 
and his speech was such a strain of eloquence as I 
never heard excelled before or since. The mob had 
to applaud him, too, and it is the highest praise 
to record that his unpremeditated utterance main- 
tained the level of Douglass's, and ended the meet- 
ing with a sense of climax — demonstrating alike 
the humanity and the capacity of the full-blooded 
negro." ' 

The session ended before Mr. Phillips could speak. 
The fears of the owners of the building closed it 
against the Abolitionists thereafter, and they were 
mobbed out of the hall of the Society Library, 
whither they had betaken themselves for refuge. 
" Thus," remarked the New York Tribune the next 
morning, " closed Anti-Slavery free discussion in 
New York for 1850." 



* The above account is taken from the report of the meeting writ- 
ten by the Rev. W. H. Furness, of Philadelphia, an eye-witness, and 
quoted in ** William Lloyd Garrison," vol. iii., pp. 294, 295. 



Wendell phillips. 231 

It was on this occasion that the Rev. Henry Ward 
Beecher, not then an Abolitionist, performed one of 
the bravest acts of his Hfe by opening Plymouth 
Church to Wendell Phillips, and appearing with him 
on the platform, to signify his appreciation of free 
speech. " I was amazed," wrote he, referring to it, 
" at the unagitated Agitator, — so calm, so fearless, so 
incisive, — every word a bullet. I never heard a more 
effective speech than Mr. Phillips's that night. He 
seemed inspired, and played with his audience (tur- 
bulent, of course) as Gulliver might with the Lilipu- 
tians. He had the dignity of Pitt, the vigor of Fox, 
the wit of Sheridan, the satire of Junius, — and a grace 
and music allhis own. Then for the first time did 
Plymouth Church catch and echo those matchless 
tones. I mean it shall not be the last time." ' 

At the anniversary of the New England Anti- 
Slavery Society, held in Boston, two weeks later, 
an attempt was made to re-enact the scenes in New 
York — with but partial success ; for Parker, Garri- 
son, and Phillips all had their say in splendid fashion, 
though their remarks were punctuated in a manner 
which no printer would have sanctioned." 

Mr. Phillips tossed out some of his most pungent 
sentences : this, for example : " Abolitionists risk 
bankruptcy for obeying commands which the pul- 
pits preach, and then fine us for practising." 

And this : " We have had here, in Massachusetts, 
Ellen Craft, a fugitive from slavery, and now Daniel 
Webster, a fugitive into slavery. ' ' ^ 

He issued during this year a pamphlet in which 



^ Letter of Mr. Beecher to Oliver Johnson (ms.). 

* Vide Liberator, vol. xx., pp. 89, 90. * /J., p. 98. 



232 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

he examined from the successive standpoints of law, 
ethics, history, and humanity, the position of Mr. 
Webster, and reached the conclusion which VVhittier 
announced in the terrible title of his poem on the 
moral suicide — " Ichabod." ' 

On September i8th, in this memorable year, Millard 
Fillmore, who succeeded to the Presidency on the 
death of General Taylor,^ signed the Fugitive Slave 
Bill, which thus became a lav/. Happy Taylor, re- 
lieved from this dreadful guilt ! Unhappy Fillmore, 
pilloried forever in the curses of mankind ! 

The venerable Josiah Quincy' headed a call for a 
meeting in Faneuil Hall to consider the condition of 
the fugitive slaves and other colored people under the 
new statute. The meeting was held on October 14th, 
amid intense excitement. Charles Francis Adams 
(the son of John Quincy Adams, who had died in 
1848) took the chair. Richard H. Dana, Jr., offered 
the resolutions which demanded the repeal of a 
measure repugnant to moral sense, — promised to de- 
fend the colored people, — and advised them to remain 
where they were. Theodore Parker, Frederick 
Douglass, and Wendell Phillips spoke in no uncer- 
tain tone, vocalizing and manufacturing public 
opinion." 

The result was seen in November, when the Whig 
party was snowed under by Massachusetts ballots ; 
and yet more emphatically the next year, when 
(Webster having been called into President Fill- 
more's Cabinet) Charles Sumner was elected to re- 



' The pamphlet is in the Boston Public Library. 

* On July gth, 1850. ^Ante, p. 22. 

* Vide Liberator, vol. xx., p. 166. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 233 

place him in the Senate* — the high-water mark thus 
far of Anti-Slavery sentiment. 

The following extract from a speech which Mr. 
Sumner delivered in Faneuil Hall upon the Fugitive 
Slave Law sharply contrasts the new senator with 
the old one, and bravely helped to lift him into the 
seat of Webster : 

" The soul sickens in the contemplation of this legalized out- 
rage. In the dreary annals of the past, there are many acts of 
shame— there are ordinances of monarchs, and laws, which have 
become a byword and a hissing to the nations. But, when we 
consider the country and the age, I ask fearlessly, What act of 
shame, what ordinance of monarch, what law can compare in 
atrocity with this enactment of an American Congress J (None.) 
I do not forget Appius Claudius, the tyrant Decemvir of ancient 
Rome, condemning Virginia as a slave ; nor Louis XIV., of 
France, letting slip the dogs of religious persecution by the 
revocation of the Edict of Nantes ; nor Charles I., of England, 
arousing the patriot-rage of Hampden by the extortion of ship- 
money ; nor the British Parliament, provoking, in our own 
country, spirits kindred to Hampden, by the tyranny of the Stamp 
Act and the Tea Tax. I would not exaggerate ; I wish to keep 
within bounds ; but I think no person can doubt the condemna- 
tion now affixed to all these transactions, and to their authors, 
must be the lot hereafter of the Fugitive Slave Bill, and of every 
one, according to the measure of his influence, who gave it his 
support. [Three cheers were here given.') Into the immortal 
catalogue of national crimes this has now passed, drawing after 
it, by an inexorable necessity, its authors also, and chiefly him, 
who, as President of the United States, set his name to the bill, 
and breathed into it that final breath without which it would 
have no life. iSensatioji.) Other Presidents maybe forgotten ; 
but the name signed to the Fugitive Slave Bill can never be for- 
gotten. {Never !) There are depths of infamy, as there are 
heights of fame. {Applause.) I regret to say what I must ; but 



^ By a vote of 193 out of 286 — just enough to elect, and after a 
long struggle. 



:234 WENDELL flllLLIPS. 

truth compels me. Better for him had he never been born ! 
{Renewed applause.') Better far for his memory, and for the 
good name of his children, had he never been President !" {Re- 
peated cheers.y 

With Phillips under Bunker Hill monument and 
Sumner in Washington, Massachusetts had reason 
to feel proud. 



* Vide Works of Charles Sumner, speech on Fugitive Slave Law. 



XVI. 

THE WOMEN, AND A MAN. 

The feelings of Mr. Phillips with regard to women 
have been indicated, — his respectful admiration for 
them, — his chivalrous espousal of their cause when 
any Rebecca needed an Ivanhoe, — his profound belief 
in their capacity for a wider life than custom ac- 
corded them. Holding such views, he gave a warm 
indorsement to a proposal for a Women's Rights 
Convention, which was made in the summer of 1850, 
at one of the iVnti-Slavery meetings, and with Mrs. 
Phillips signed the call. It was always a gratifica- 
tion to him that this cause should have been the issue 
of the Abolition movement — as Eve was taken from 
the side of Adam. 

The Convention met at Worcester, in Massachu- 
setts, on October 23d and 24th, 1850,^ year of won- 
ders ! The attendance was large, the women being 
in the majority, but the men having fit representatives 
in Phillips and Garrison and Douglass, who stood for 
the Anti-Slavery interest, and in Sargent and Chan- 
ning, from the liberal pulpit. No phonographic re- 
port of the proceedings was made. But enough is 
known of what was said and done to justify the state- 
ment that those present consciously and worthily 
launched the most magnificent reform ever under- 



^ Vide Liberator^ vol. xx., p. 143, 



236 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

taken, — an effort in behalf, not of a race (like Anti- 
Slavery), nor of a nation (like the revolt of the colo- 
nies), but of a sex/ The immediate result was the 
perfecting of an organization on a national basis, 
with the appointment of a central committee, of 
which Mr. Phillips was made treasurer.* Europe, 
too, answered to America. The Westminster Review 
noticed the Convention in an elaborate article writ- 
ten by Mrs. John Stuart Mill, and indorsed it : so 
that the women's cause dates in Old England as in 
New England from this gathering at Worcester. 

The wits of the pot-house and the what-nows of 
society were equally and mightily amused. Those 
twanged their bow-strings and sped their arrows of 
ridicule at so plain a target. These coughed under 
the handkerchief, and ogled behind the door, and 
lamented the immodesty of " such brazen women." 
The " Hen Convention" was the name given it by 
the press. A certain Universalist clergyman (whose 
name it would be cruel to give) announced from his 
pulpit a meeting at which Lucy Stone was to speak 
in these words : " To-night, at the Town Hall, a hen 
will attempt to crow." This was wit in 1850 — as the 
word " nigger" was humanity ! ^ 

Early in the following year, Mr. Phillips wrote an 
account of his experiences at Worcester to his friend. 
Miss Pease, across the water : 

" You would have enjoyed the Women's Convention. I think 
I never saw a more intelligent and highly cultivated audience, 
more ability guided by the best taste on a platform, more deep, 
practical interest, on any occasion. It took me completely by 



Vide Liberator, vol. xx., p. l8l. "^ lb. 

^ Remarks of Mrs. H. H. Robinson, quoted in Austin's " Life and 
Times of Wendell Phillips," p. 155. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 237 

surprise ; and the women were the ablest speakers, too. You 
would have laughed, as we used to do in 1840, to hear dear 
Lucretia Mott answer me. I had presumed to differ from her, 
and asserted that the cause would meet more immediate and pal- 
pable and insulting opposition from women than from men — and 
scolded them for it. She put, as she so well knows how, the 
silken snapper on her whiplash, and proceeded to give me the 
gentlest and yet most cutting rebuke. 'Twas like her old fire 
when London Quakers angered her gentleness — and beautifully 
done, so that the victim himself could enjoy the artistic perfec 
tion of his punishment." ^ 

Mr. Phillips adhered to his opinion, nevertheless ; 
and time has shown that he was correct. Women 
themselves have been the most heated and the most 
influential opponents of their own cause. Were 
they a unit, they could carry it to success in a week. 

On October 29th, George Thompson,^ the English 
orator, landed in Boston — his second visit to Ameri- 
ca. The first was in 1835, when he was mobbed out 
of the country for his Abolitionism, He found affairs 
much as he left them ; so that he might have rubbed 
his eyes and asked himself whether he had really 
been absent for fifteen years. ^ At a reception given 
him by the Abolitionists in Faneuil Hall, on Novem- 
ber 15th, a throng of rowdies made themselves 
masters of ceremonies and howled so lustily that no 
one could get a hearing ; not more W^endell Phillips 
than George Thompson himself." " No matter," 
said Mr. Phillips ; " the truth Avill float farther on the 
hisses of a mob than the most eloquent lips can carry 
it. 

Shouted down in Boston, the Abolitionists with 



* Quoted in " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. iii., p 312, note. 

2 Ante, p. T02. 

^ " William Lloyd Garrison," vol, iii., p. 305. * lb., p. 306, 



235 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

their guest went to Worcester — appealed from the 
pocket to the heart of the commonwealth. Here 
they enjoyed a feast of reason and a flow of soul. 
Thoilipson spoke mag-nificently, to sympathetic thou- 
sands, and so did Phillips. It was on this occasion 
that the latter uttered the famous sentence in which 
he laid a hand on the most prominent features of 
American geography. After referring to the failure 
of the European rev^olutionary movements in 1848, 
he burst forth : 

" The Carpathian Mountains may shelter tyrants. The slopes 
of Germany may bear up a race more familiar with the Greek 
text than with the Greek phalanx. For aught I know, the wave 
of Russian rule may sweep so far westward as to fill once more 
with miniature despots the robber castles of the Rhine. But of 
this I am sure : God piled the Rocky Mountains as the ramparts 
of freedom. He scooped the V^alley of the Mississippi as the 
cradle of free States. He poured Niagara as the anthem of free 
men." ^ 

In the first month of the new year^ there was a 
soiree in Cochituate Hall, in Boston, to celebrate 
the twentieth anniversary of Mr. Garrison's paper, 
the Liberator. It was an occasion of rare interest, 
and rallied the entire social and oratorical strength 
of local Abolitionism. In the course of the evening, 
George Thompson presented to Mr. Garrison a gold 
watch appropriately inscribed ; and amid delightful 
chat, interspersed w^ith addresses from the various 
sons of thunder present, the hours sped. Mr. Phil- 
lips paints the scene — again for the delectation of 
Elizabeth Pease : 

" You would have enjoyed the soiree, perfectly extempore — so 
much so that E. O. did not know he was to be chairman until I 



' Vide Liberator^ vol, xx., p. 195. "^January 24th, 1851. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 239 

moved it, and then he filled the chair with the wit and readi- 
ness that is possessed by all the Quincys. It was unique — the 
heartiest Anti-Slavery gathering I ever saw. Thompson had 
been very ill in the country and was looking quite ghastly, fit for 
a sick-bed, but spoke gloriously ; and his presence was, in a 
great degree; an inspiration to the rest. Add to that. Garrison 
in tears — the occasion — and the company scarred with many a 
struggle — and you will easily see that we should feel deeply, 
and, like all times of deep feeling, it should be mingled of mirth 
and profound emotion. Such hours come rarely in life." ^ 

From Mr. Phillips's own speech, which was largely 
in a sportive vein, we subjoin a serious sentence Cx- 
two, as significant of his appreciation of the Liberator 
and of its editor : 

"How many owe their reform alphabet to ihe. Liberator / 
John Foster used to say, that the best test of a book's value was 
the mood of mind in which one rose from it. To this trial I 
am always willing the most eager foe should subject the Liber- 
ator. I appeal to each one here, whether he ever leaves its col- 
umns without feeling his coldness rebuked, his selfishness shamed, 
his hand strengthened for every good purpose ; without feeling 
lifted, for a while, from his ordinary life, and made to hold com- 
munion with purer thoughts and loftier aims ; and without being 
moved— the coldest of us — for a moment, at least, with an 
ardent wish that we, too, may be privileged to be co-workers 
with God in the noble purposes for our brother's welfare which 
have been unfolded and pressed on our attention ? Let critics 
who have time settle, after leisurely analysis, the various faults 
which, as they think, have marred our friend's course, and de- 
nounce, as suits them, the other topics which he has chosen to 
mingle with his main subject ; enough for us, in the heat of our 
conflict, to feel that it has always ' been good for us to have 
been ' with him. How can we ever thank him for the clear at- 
mosphere into which he has lifted us ! If of the Abolitionists it 
may be said, with such exceeding measure of truth, that they 
have broken the shackles of party, thrown down the walls of 



' Compare " William Doyd Garrison," vol. iii,, p. 313. 



240 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

sect, trampled on the prejudices of their land and time, risen to 
something like the freedom of Christian men, something of 
that perfect toleration which is the fruit only of the highest intel- 
lectual and moral culture— how much is all this owing to the in- 
fluence of such a leader ! My friends, if we never free a slave, 
we have at least freed ourselves in the effort to emancipate our 
brother-man. {Applause.') From the blindness of American 
prejudice the most cruel the sun looks on ; from the narrowness 
of sect ; from parties, quibbling over words ; we have been re- 
deemed into full manhood — taught to consecrate life to some- 
thing worth living for. Life ! what a weariness it is, with its 
drudgery of education ; its little cares of to-day, all to be lived 
over again to-morrow ; its rising, eating, and lying down — only 
to continue the monotonous routine ! Let us thank God that 
He has inspired any one to awaken us from being these dull and 
rotting weeds — revealed to us the joy of self-devotion — taught 
us how we intensify this life by laying it a willing offering on 
the altar of some great cause !" * 

How did Mr. Thompson fare in America, beyond 
the congenial circle which bade him welcome ? Mr. 
Phillips shall tell us, as he told Miss Pease, in a letter 
to that lad}', from which we once more quote : 

" His visit has had a wonderful effect ; calling out into some- 
thing of activity some who were alive during his former stay, 
but had fallen off, or fallen asleep, in the long and hard trials 
of the years since ; and some who were awkwardly conscious of 
having ratted when trouble lowered, and longed for some occa- 
sion that would open the door for a return without imposing too 
palpable a confession of repentance. Then his name gathers 
immense audiences, the fame of his former achievements still 
haunting our towns, the plebeians of the cause (the converts 
since 1835) hankering after the sound of that voice whose echoes 
had reached them in the stirring tales of the nobles of earlier 
conversion. The rage, too, of opposition raises him into an 
object of universal attention, 

" It is generally voted that he has not grown a day older since 



' Compare '* William Lloyd Garrison," vol, iii., pp. 319, 3204 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 24I 

1835, though the dissentients are not few. Then many scold, 
more laugh, at his snuff ; but his vivacity, brilliancy, and variety 
of accomplishments in private life charm every one that has the 
good luck to get near him. He is a universal idol. His project 
of lecturing upon general topics would, in my opinion, have 
been a failure even had no disturbance intervened to prevent it. 
Your English mode of lecture is so totally different from ours 
that, lacking the impetus of being abused, he would have goi 
on but poorly in his voyage. As it is, he has delivered his 
course on ' British India ' in five or six towns, and with toler- 
able success, owing to the extra exertion of friends, and the wish 
of many to hear the * Great Unheard ' without compromising 
their dignity by bemg seen in an Abolition meeting. In our 
Anti-Slavery gatherings his speeches have been grand and elo- 
quent beyond all description. We hope that his visit will not 
have been wholly vain to him in a pecuniary point of view." * 

Mr. Thompson, who was now a member of the 
British Parliament, prolonged his stay on these 
shores until his constituents began to murmur. 
Called home by these indications of English discon- 
tent, he sailed from Boston on June 26th, 185 1, not, 
howev^er, before his American friends (with Mr. 
Phillips among them) had feted him at a farewell 
soiree at which a thousand plates were laid.^ 

Upon reaching England he addressed his constitu- 
ents in explanation of his tarry. We clip a passage 
from his speech, as a specimen of his style : 

" Allow me to say, that had I remained for ease, leisure, 
emolument, recreation, I should have condemned myself before 
I had appeared to receive your censure. I was not botanizing 
on the Himalayas ; I was not pursuing antiquarian researches 
on the banks of the Nile ; I was not gazing upon the sublimities 
of the Alps or the Andes ; I was not putting my legs under the 
tables of the bloated planters of the South, or truckling politi- 
cians of the North, of America. I was facing labors, perils, per- 



* Vide Liberator^ vol, xx., p. 18. ' lb,, vol. xxi., pp. 9S, loi. 



242 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

secutions, and obloquy, in the cause of the most oppressed and 
degraded of the human race. . . . 

" Of all institutions of personal slavery, looked at in connec- 
tion with its safeguards and its origin, — of all the institutions of 
slavery on the face of the earth, there are none so unmitigatedly 
bad, so inexcusably atrocious, so colossal in their felonious 
aspect, so diametrically opposed to the professions and practices 
of the people that encourage and support them, as the institution 
of slavery in the United States of America. There is no repub- 
licanism in America while slavery exists. The cause of liberty 
throughout the world is maimed and bleeding while slavery re- 
mains there. We preach democracy in vain in England while 
a Tory or Conservative can point us to the opposite side of the 
Atlantic, and say : * There are nineteen millions of the human 
race, free, absolutely ; every man heir-apparent to the throne ; 
governing themselves— the government of all, by all, for all ; 
but, instead of being a consistent republic, it is one widespread 
confederacy of free men for the enslavement of an entire nation 
of another complexion.' While that institution lasts, the experi- 
ment of men to govern themselves has not been proved to be a 
successful one ; for there is no virtue in loving freedom for our- 
selves." ' 

While the Englishman was in this country, Mr. 
Phillips was with him as much as possible. The two 
orators spoke together on slavery at various places 
in the vicinity of Boston. What a pair ! What a 
treat ! Some who yet live remember to have heard 
them as they swung around this circle, and recall it 
as an experience of intellectual epicureanism. 



' yidg Liberator^ vol. xxi., p. 135. 



XVII. 

DISJECTA MEMBRA. 

An ominous Pro-Slavery invasion of this country 
had been going on steadily through hve decades. 
For it began in the administration of Jefferson, with 
the acquisition of Louisiana. It proceeded in con- 
stant encroachments, whose successive mile-stones 
were the Missouri Compromise, the annexation of 
Texas, the Mexican War, and now the Fugitive 
Slave Law. Thus far the inroads had been con- 
ducted by legislation. The South was soon to sub- 
stitute rifles for constables. 

Meantime, under the latest device of slavery, the 
condition of the colored people, even in the free 
States, was pitiable. They were without recourse. 
The Declaration of Independence was treason, and 
the Golden Rule was heresy. Senator Sumner esti- 
mated within a few months after the passage of the 
Fugitive Slave Law that ** as many as six thousand 
Christian men and women, meritorious persons, — a 
larger band than that of the escaping Puritans, — pre- 
cipitately fled from homes which they had estab- 
lished," to Canada.^ 

In Boston, on February 15th, 185 1, Shadrach, a 
colored waiter in a coffee-house, was seized as an 
escaped slave. The court-room whither he had been 



' Vide Liberator^ vol. xxxiv., p. 70. 



244 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

hurried was filled with a crowd of his own color, 
and, suddenly, Shadrach disappeared among them ! ' 
Washington went into convulsions. 

" ' The head and front of the offending,' in this 
instance — what is it?" asked Mr. Garrison a week 
later. " A sudden rush of a score or two of un- 
armed friends of equal liberty — an uninjurious de- 
liverance of the oppressed out of the hands of the 
oppressor — the quiet transportation of a slave out of 
this slavery-ruled land to the free soil of Upper 
Canada ! Nobody injured, nobody wronged, but 
simply a chattel transformed into a man, and con- 
ducted to a spot whereon he can glorify God in his 
body and spirit, which are his !" ' 

At this moment the authorities of the underground 
railroad resolved themselves into a Vigilance Com- 
mittee for the purpose of giving aid and comfort to 
the flying bondmen. Mr. Phillips was a prominent 
stockholder in this corporation of humanity. Writ- 
ing on March 9th, 1851, to Miss Pease, he gives that 
fair correspondent a graphic description of the oper- 
ations of the Vigilance Committee : 

" In Boston, all is activity — never before so much since I knew 
the cause. The rescue of Shadrach has set the whole public 
afire. We have some hundreds of fugitives among us. The 
oldest are alarmed. I had an old woman of seventy ask my ad- 
vice about flying, though originally free and fearful only of being 
caught up by mistake. Of course, in one so old and valueless 
there was no temptation to mistake ; but in others it is horrible 
to see the distress of families torn apart at this inclement season, 
and the working head forced to leave good employment, and 
seek not employment so much as the chance of it in the narrow, 
unenterprising, and overstocked market of Canada. Our Vigi- 
lance Committee meets every night. The escapes have been prov- 



* Vid^ Liberator^ vol. xxi., p. 30. * lb* 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 245 

identiaL Since Shadrach's case, nigh a hundred have left the 
city. The way we get news of warrants is surprising. One 
officer was boasting to one of our members, whom he did not 
know to be such, that now they had a fellow in sight, and he 
would be arrested by one o'clock. Our friend lounged care- 
lessly away, told what he'd heard, and by twelve the poor fellow 
described was steaming it on iron lines to Canada. Another, at 
work on a wharf, came out of his employer's store, saw his old 
master before him, heard him whistle, thought that was as 
much of such music as he cared for, dived into the cellar, up the 
back door, and ' has not been heard tell of,' as ' Baillie Nocol 
Jarvie ' says, since. 

*' There have been several as close escapes as that, and there 
are still quite a number of Southerners here. It is said privately 
that all they want is one from Boston, to show the discontented 
ones at home that it can be done ; and our merchants groan at 
the trade they lose by the hatred the South bears us because she 
has not yet brought Boston under. Our business streets are 
markedly quiet. But we hope the same spirit is alive as laughed 
to scorn the mother country shutting up our harbor to starve us 
into compliance. Webster, too (like your Lord North), the in- 
famous New Hampshire renegade, threatens to line our streets 
with soldiers. We've seen none, opposed to us, since the red- 
coats ; the Government, which wishes to succeed to the hatred 
they earned for their employers, had better send us their suc- 
cessors. 

" I need not enlarge on this ; but the long evening sessions — 
debates about secret escapes — plans to evade where we can't re- 
sist — the door watched that no spy may enter — the whispering 
consultations of the morning — some putting property out of their 
hands, planning to incur penalties, and planning also that, in 
case of conviction, the Government may get nothing from them 
— the doing, and answering no questions — intimates forbearing 
to ask the knowledge which it may be dangerous to. have — all 
remind one of those foreign scenes which have hitherto been 
known to us, transatlantic republicans, only in books. Yet we 
enjoy ourselves richly, and I doubt whether more laughing is 
done anywhere than in Anti-Slavery parlors." * 

^ Quoted in " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. iii., pp. 323, 324, 



246 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

The next fugitive-slave case in Boston did not end 
so happily as had that of Shadrach. Thomas Sims, 
a colored refugee, was arrested, hustled into the 
court-house (which was surrounded by chains) ; and, 
with the police of the city and the militia of the 
State for an escort, was carried thence on shipboard 
and returned to Savannah.* 

The better part of the community (but not the 
" respectabilit}'") bitterly opposed the atrocity. 
Bells were tolled in the country towns. In Boston, 
meeting after meeting was held, at which Phillips, 
Parker, Garrison, and Quinc}^ spoke ; and there was 
a monster demonstration on the Common, where the 
orator addressed acres of excited people, and invoked 
the curse of the Almighty upon institutions which 
protected tyrants and immolated victims. 

New York City being at this time dominated by 
Captain Rynders, the American Anti-Slavery Society 
was denied a hall there in 185 1 in which to hold its 
annual May meeting, and found shelter in Syracuse, 
where Gerrit Smith, a Free Soil leader, bade it wel- 
come.'' The health of Mrs. Phillips was so precari- 
ous that her husband was held at home, and made 
himself notable at the session by his absence. He 
was able, however, to slip down to Worcester, on 
August 1st, to take part in the celebration, in that 

^ Vidg Liberator, vol. xxii., p. 62. " Sims was severely whipped 
after arriving at Savannah, and for two months was kept closely con- 
fined in a cell. He was then sent to a slave-pen in Charleston, and 
thence to a slave-pen at New Orleans. He was purchased by a brick 
mason, and taken to Vicksburg, whence, in 1863, he escaped to the 
besieging army of General Grant, who gave him transportation to the 
North." Austin's "Life and Times of Wendell Phillips," p. 141, 
n*te. 

' 73., vol. xxi., p. 81. 



WENDELL rniLLIPS. 247 

town, of West Indian emancipation. His speech was 
the feature of the day, and was devoted to a keen 
analysis of the condition of affairs in America.' 

In October the second National Women's Rights 
Convention met, also in Worcester. Those who 
had attended it the previous year were present in 
1851. Mr. Phillips there delivered the most elabo- 
rate and best-known of all his speeches on this theme. 
He sounded the depths and fixed the latitude and 
longitude of the reform with an accuracy which 
left no need for amendment. This was the powerful 
presentation of which George William Curtis has 
said : "In the general statement of principle nothing 
has been added to it ; in vivid and effective elo- 
quence of advocacy it has never been surpassed. 
All the arguments for independence echoed John 
Adams in the Continental Congress. All the pleas 
for applying the American principle of representa- 
tion to the wives and mothers of American citizens 
echo the eloquence of Wendell Phillips at Worces- 
ter."'' Happily, the address was harvested, and is 
easily accessible in the collected speeches of the 
orator. Those who would study this masterpiece 
are referred to it there. ^ 

When Mr. Phillips met Theodore Parker, after re- 
turning from the Women's Rights Convention, the 
clergyman said to him : 

** Wendell, why do you make a fool of yourself ?" 

** Theodore," was the reply, " this is the greatest 
question of the ages ; you ought to understand it." 

' Vide Liberator^ voL xxii., p. 130, for a full report. 
"^ *' Wendell Phillips. A Eulogy," by George William Curtis, 
p. 32. 

^ yide" Speeches and Lectures," by Wendell Phillips, pp. 11-34. 



248 WEXDFI.L nilLLTPS. 

Before the year had passed Parker had espoused 
the cause, and he preached four sermons upon it in 
warm advocacy of the whole claim.' 

In December, 1851, Louis Kossuth came to Ameri- 
ca, seeking the intervention of the United States in 
behalf of Hungary, torn and bleeding in the talons 
of the Austrian eagle. This remarkable man had 
mastered the English language so completely that 
he could say with " Hamlet :" , 

" I am a native here, 



And to the manner born." 

Unfortunately, he had also acquired something else 
American — the national habit of ignoring slavery, 
and eulogizing our eagle as though it were not as 
cruel as the Hapsburg bird of prey. Slave-holders 
invited him here ; slave-holders entertained him 
while he remained ; and slave-holders profited by 
his silence regarding their sin and by his laudations 
of their government. 

This w^as a bitter mortification to the Abolitionists. 
They were among his most ardent admirers. They 
deeply sympathized with his poor country. But as 
they watched his triumphal course, and saw him de- 
liberately sacrifice the negro to aid the Hungarian, 
their indignation flamed. At the Anti-Slavery 
Bazaar,Mn Boston, on Decem.ber 27th, 1851, Wendell 
Phillips rebuked the illustrious Magyar in a Mont 
Blanc utterance, down whose side he shook loose 



^ Mrs. Lucy Stone is the authority for this story. 

^ An Anti-Slavery bazaar was annually held in Boston almost 
throughout the struggle against slavery ; at which articles contributed 
at home and abroad were offered for sale for the benefit of the Anti- 
Slavery treasury ; and at which Mr. Phillips and others were wont to 
make addresses. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 249 

avalanche after avalanche of condemnation. He told 
who Kossuth was — a fugitive from Austrian law ; he 
described this country, madly sensitive to foreign 
criticism, and hanging breathlessly upon the great 
fugitive's lips to catch what he should say ; he showed 
that Kossuth had been informed of the condition of 
the American struggle before he left the old world, 
so that he could not plead ignorance of the atrocities 
enacted here ; he quoted the unstinted eulogies pro- 
nounced by the nation's guest upon our institutions, 
with never a whispered exception of anything objec- 
tionable ; he contrasted this selfish patriotism of the 
Magyar, which consented to help Hungary at the 
expense of one sixth part of the population of Ameri- 
ca, meeted and peeled under iron heels which made 
Austria's seem merciful in comparison, — with the 
broad humanity of O'Connell, of Victor Hugo, of 
Lafayette, pleading not for one race but for all ; he 
disclaimed the expectation that the visitor would 
take a pronounced Anti-Slavery stand, but asserted 
that he might justly be called upon to guard his 
words and withhold such wholesale laudation ; and 
ended by quoting the words of Fletcher of Saltoun : 
" I would do much to help my country, but I would 
not do a wicked thing to save her !" ^ 

The speech was made in Mr. Phillips's loftiest 
vein. It makes one's blood tingle even to read it. 
And it was prodigiously effective. In the delivery, 
the orator broke through his usual repose of manner. 
He seemed to feel the paradox involved in such a 
challenge of one reformer by another. He was de- 



' Vide Liberator, vol. xxii., p. 3, for a full report of this speech, not 
elsewhere accessible. 



5^6 WKNDfiLL PHILLIPS. 

clamatory beyond precedent. It was like one of 
Wagner's tenor robiistos in " Lohengrin," singing 
with a full brass band accompaniment. 

Kossuth's mission was a failure— and deserved to 
be. He asked the United States to do, what he dis- 
tinctly refused to do —interfere in the domestic affairs 
of a foreign country. After parading as a nine days' 
wonder, he crept back to Europe to bury himself 
alive in chagrin, leaving behind him here only the 
memory of his marvellous oratory. 



GOOD WORKS. 

In Boston, as in all large cities, there are many 
girls half or two thirds grown, women in their pas- 
sions, children in their knowledge and self-control, 
afloat on the streets, whom idleness and vagrant 
habits expose to devilish temptations. They are in 
danger of becoming rotten before they are ripe. 
Mr. Phillips always interested himself in this class. 
With Theodore Parker, he assisted early in 1852 in 
the formation of a moral reform society for the res- 
cue of such as had gone astray and for the protection 
of those as yet unfallen. The object of the organi- 
zation was twofold : to instruct these waifs in the 
means of earning an honest livelihood, and then to 
remove them into a more wholesome environment 
beyond the town. One of Mr. Phillips's closest 
friends, the Rev. John T. Sargent, a gentleman of 
wealth and social prominence, a noble spirit, ac- 
cepted the agency of the society, while Phillips 
and Parker were Aaron and Hur to hold up his 
hands. ^ 

The anniversary of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery 
Society always occurred in January. On the 28th 
of that month, Mr. Phillips addressed the Society in 
one of the ablest of his speeches, that on " Public 



" Life of Theodore Parker," by O. B. Frothingham, p. 365. 



252 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Opinion." ' It is remarkable for its epigrammatic 
point, and also because of the absolute faith the 
speaker expressed in the republican principle — in the 
competency of the people, and in their ultimate cer- 
tainty to right every wrong. 

The sessions covered two days. In the evening 
of the third day, the 30th, the Abolitionists met 
in Faneuil Hall, and on this congenial platform the 
orator spoke upon the recent surrender of Sims.'' 
Though opened by his friends, the hall was crowded 
by his foes. The meeting was stormy. Speaker 
after speaker was shouted down. Mr. Phillips him- 
self had to fight for a hearing. Every mention of 
the exciting occurrences of the hour was hissed, 
every name he ventured to censure was cheered. 
But his wit, his satire, his repartee, so turned the 
laugh upon the interrupters that at last they were 
cowed into quietude. He mobbed the mob ! ^ 

It was in INIarch, 1852, that Mrs. Harriet Beecher 
Stowe's " Uncle Tom's Cabin" appeared — not so 
much a book as an event. Douglas Jerrold said, 
** the soil in AustraHa was so fertile that if you 
tickled it with a hoe it laughed with a harvest." 
" Uncle Tom" fell upon prepared ground. The 
crop of readers was wonderful — striking proof of the 
success of the Abolitionists in creating Anti-Slavery 
sentiment. Richard Hildreth's " White Slave," an 
equally dramatic work, first published in 1835, made 
no sensation because born out of due time. Mrs. 
Stowe's book, on the contrary, appearing seventeen 



' Vide his " Speeches and Lectures," pp. 35-55. 

2 lb., pp. 55-70. 

3 Vide Higginson's "Wendell Phillips," p. 13. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 253 

years later, had the advantage of a ripened public 
conscience — wide awake enough to read if not to 
act. Twenty thousand copies of ** Uncle Tom's 
Cabin" were sold within three weeks after it left the 
press. Eighty thousand copies were disposed of 
within three months.^ Its success was even greater 
in England. George Thompson wrote Mr. Garri- 
son, in the autumn of 1852, from London : 

" ' Uncle Tom ' is doing a great work here. Between four 
and five hundred thousand copies (varying in price from sixpence 
to seven and sixpence) are already in circulation. Two of our 
metropolitan theatres are nightly crowded to overflowing by per- 
sons anxious to witness a representation of its striking scenes on 
the stage. Behold the fruit of your labors and rejoice." "^ 

Not long afterward the book was dramatized in 
this country. In Boston and in New York, as in 
London, it proved a gold mine to the theatres ; and 
slaves shot their hunters to slow music and loud 
applause. 

God makes "the wrath of man to praise Him." 
Even the rendition of a fugitive slave created Anti- 
Slavery opinion. Realizing this (though sickened 
by the experience) and encouraged by the phenom- 
enal popularity of Mrs. Stowe's novel, the Abolition- 
ists decided to observe the anniversary of Thomas 
Sim's surrender. Accordingly, on April 12th, 1852, 
a great meeting was held in Boston, at which Mr. 
Phillips pronounced another of his masterpieces^ — '■ 
the third since the year broke. This is equal to 
either of the others ; not in brilliancy, perhaps, but 
in a certain grave splendor and sustained majesty of 



* '* William Lloyd Garrison," vol. iii., p. 362. 

* IS., pp. 362, 363. ' Phillips's " Speeches," pp. 71-97. 



254 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

diction. It illustrates the variety arid fertility of his 
style. 

Mr. Phillips journeyed to Central New York in 
May, 1852, to attend the annual meeting of the 
American Anti- Slavery Society, which convened in 
Rochester.' He was warmly welcomed and eagerly 
listened to. Like Dante, exiled from Florence and 
driven to Ravenna, the absence of the Abolitionists 
from New York City made anniversary week stupid 
there, and raised the interior town into national 
prominence during the tarry of tlie Convention. 

The nation was now in the throes of a Presidential 
canvass. Three parties divided the field — the Demo- 
cratic, the Whig, and the Free Soil. When the votes 
were cast and counted in November, Franklin Pierce 
was chosen, the Whig party was routed never to rally 
again, and the Free Soilers were distanced in the 
race. It is a singular fact that, spite of the immense 
constituency of ** Uncle Tom," the Anti-Slavery bal- 
lots only numbered one hundred and fifty-six thou- 
sand out of three millions — an actual falling off since 
1848, when the Free Soil vote was two hundred and 
ninety thousand ! And what did the election of 
Franklin Pierce mean ? It meant the approval of 
the Pro-Slavery propaganda. It meant the dis- 
avowal of the Anti-Slavery protest. It showed how 
superficial the opposition to the lords of the planta- 
tion was, and how complete was their ascendency. 
The despotism of the Czar in Russia, the throne of 
the Hapsburgs in Austria, the privileges of the Brit- 
ish aristocracy, did not seem as impregnable in 1852 
as did the slave power in America. 



' Kidr Liberator, vol. xxii., pp. S2, 8^. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 255 

As for Mr. Phillips, the result of the election only 
confirmed his views. As Milton said, " new pres- 
byter is but old priest writ large," so he thought 
this latest and completest triumph of the South was 
but a new demonstration of old truth. The slave 
Union must be broken. There was no hope for lib- 
erty while it intrusted itself to slavery. It was 
"Little Red Riding-hood" led by the wolf. No 
man can serve two masters — neither can a countrj-. 
What could be more unnatural than such a coalition } 
Freedom — -coffle gangs ; the nineteenth century — the 
twelfth century ; republican institutions — despotism ; 
ideas — ignorance ; the Golden Rule — satanic self- 
ishness ; law — self-will ; progress — stagnation ! And 
these opposites and contradictions existing under one 
government, and administered by the worser part ! 
Such a Union — what was it but the union of the 
shark with its prey ? Therefore he redoubled his 
efforts to dissolve the Union, — to persuade the North 
to withdraw from such a hopeless partnership, — to 
win that section which furnished the strength and 
paid the bills to shake off the South and form a new 
Union, like attracting like. 

Standing in isolation, with no party collar around 
his neck, and no sectarian padlock on his lips, he 
enjoyed the luxury of expressing his thought Avith un- 
compromising candor. He summoned the men and 
measures around him to judgment. He criticised 
freely and sharply. The Democratic and the Whig 
parties were the right and left hands of slavery. 
The Free Soil party, like its predecessor, the Liberty 
party, was inefficient because inconsistent. It was 
fatally hampered by the necessary limitations of a 
Pi*o-Slaverv Constitution. The Free Soilers hated 



256 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

slavery, yet were forced as politicians to disclaim 
any purpose to interfere with it where it already ex- 
isted. They wanted freedom throughout the Union, 
yet were obliged to content themselves with claim- 
ing it in the free States and the new Territories. 
They objected to engaging in a slave hunt, yet had 
to acknowledge that the return of fugitives was a 
Constitutional duty. 

Mr. Phillips rejoiced in any increased Anti-Slavery 
sentiment which an enlarged political opposition to 
Calhounism might show. He recognized the good 
intentions and often the valuable services of the 
chiefs of political Anti-Slavery.' At the same time 
he remorselessly exposed their inconsistencies, and 
emphasized the inevitable limitations of their position 
inside of a slave Union. For himself, he kept re- 
affirming his purpose to oppose slavery not less in 
the slave States than in the Territories. While it 
actually existed anywhere in America it possibly ex- 
isted everywhere. He hated the system, not merely 
the extension of it. Did the Constitution protect it ? 
Then the Constitution must be revolutionized. Was 
the Union its bulwark ? Then the Union must be 
overthrown, and a new Union mast be constructed — 
a nineteenth-century Union — a Christian Union — a 
Union of liberty — a Union of progress — a Union in 
which the Declaration of Independence should 7iot 
be treason, and in which the Golden Rule should not 
be heresy — a Union whose national emblem should 
no longer be a grand slave hunt, with the President 
as the foremost hound of the pack. 

Such was Mr. Phillips's position throughout these 



' Vide his " Speeches," pp. 120-48, /a jj-/;;z, for instances. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 25/ 

years. Radical ? Yes. Unpopular ? Certainly. 
But logical, consistent, easily understood. The 
South said : " We will carry our slaves everywhere.'' 
Political Anti-Slavery said : " You must not take 
them into the Territories.'' Mr. Phillips said : " You 
shall hold slaves nozvhere." He met the South in its 
own spirit, and rephed to it with uncompromising- 
boldness. He liked Southerners, personally. And 
politically, he admired their courage and directness. 
These qualities he likewise embodied, met frankness 
with frankness, and said " No" in the same tone in 
which Calhoun said " Yes." 

Of course, the eloquent Abolitionist did not make 
many converts ; that is, he did not persuade many 
to take his extreme position. But he leavened the 
whole lump. He made slavery hateful. He won 
multitudes to start on the crusade for freedom. He 
prepared the North to abolish slavery just as soon 
as it saw the way and got the opportunity. This he 
did. For the rest, he recognized the limitations of 
his own position. He was content to be a sower of 
seed. He knew, none better, that unless some one 
held up a high ideal, the loftiest and most outside 
conception of justice, in such an evil age, the situa- 
tion would be hopeless. It was a part of his phi- 
losophy not to aim at immediate results, — at carrying 
the jury by a coup de main ; but to educate public 
opinion. " My dear John," he wrote to a friend, 
" if we would get half the loaf, we must demand the 
whole of it."' These words summarized his philoso- 
phy of agitation. He looked at to-day from the 



' Letter to Rev. John T. Sargent (ms.). 



258 AVENDELL riin.Lll'S. 

vantage-ground of to-morrow. He asked, not What 
is expedient ? but What is right ? He could afford 
to wait. He knew the world would catch up 
to him, sooner or later. So he kept ahead, made 

moral pioneering his function, and cried, " Excel- 

»» 

SI or. 



XIX. 

PORTRAITS. 

The rising tide of Anti-Slavery feeling was attrib- 
uted, by those unfriendly to the Abolitionists, to 
anybody and everybody save Mr. Phillips and his 
colaborers. They were reckless, denunciatory, un- 
reasonable, and obstructed the cause they professed 
to serve. Charles Sumner, Mrs. Stowe, Henry 
Ward Beecher, were the real influences that moved 
the swelling flood — such was the assertion. 

At the meeting of the New England Anti-Slavery 
Society, on January 27th, 1853, -^^^- Phillips consid- 
ered these statements, which had just been ably re- 
peated in detail in one of the English journals as a 
criticism upon the methods of the reformers. He 
went over the whole ground, staked out the boun- 
daries between truth and falsehood, and mapped 
down the facts, luminously and voluminously. This 
speech he called " The Philosophy of the Abolition 
Movement." ^ It is, perhaps, the most exhaustive 
of all his efforts, and deserves the careful study of 
those who would see to the bottom of the subject. 
Personally, the orator was the least vain of men. 
He claimed nothing for himself, except the wish and 
purpose to do his duty. But he did feel the slight 
to the veterans who surrounded him, covered with 
honorable scars ; and, most of all, the attempt by 



' " Speeches and Lectures," by Wendell Phillips, pp. 98-153. 



26o WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

recent converts still in the " awkward squad," -to 
court-martial Mr. Garrison. Said he : 

"We are perfectly willing — I am, for one — to be the dead 
lumber that shall make a path for these men into the honor of 
the country. Use us, freely, in any way, for the slave. When 
the temple is finished the tools will not complain that they are 
thrown aside, let who will lead up the nation to ' put on the top- 
stone with shoutings.' But while so much remains to be done, 
while our little camp is beleaguered all about, do nothing to 
weaken his influence, whose sagacity, more than any other single 
man's, has led us up hither, and whose name is identified with 
that movement which the North still heeds, and the South still 
fears the most." * 

As one result of this vindication, Mr. Phillips be- 
came involved in a prolonged controversy with Hor- 
ace Mann, then a Free Soil member of Congress 
from Massachusetts. This gentleman was a promi- 
nent driller in the "awkward squad," and, with a 
brand new uniform on, set up for a veteran. He was 
a sharp fighter on paper, and with his pen for a, 
sword was a formidable foe. The combat was fierce 
and angry on his part, calm and self-possessed on 
the part of Mr. Phillips. It was fought over the 
whole field of difference between the Free Soilers 
and the Abolitionists. It were needless at this late 
day to detail the respective thrusts and parries. 
Suffice it to say that it ended much as a certain 
famous duel in France did, between Floquet and 
Boulanger — with Mr. Phillips in the role of the 
former, and with Mr. Mann hors de combat, like the 
" brav* general." "" 

In the midst of this controversy, Mr. Phillips found 



' Phillips's " Speeches," p. 138. 

"^ For the ipsissima verba vide Liberator, vol. xxiii., pp. 42, 46, 54, 
58, 66, 70. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 261 

time to address a Committee of the Constitutional 
Convention of Massachusetts, then in session, in ad- 
vocacy of a numerousl3^-signed petition of the women 
of the State asking for equal political rights with 
men. The Convention heard the orator, and then 
threw the petition into the waste-basket.* It was too 
far ahead. There was soft solder enough among 
those tinkers in the Convention — but they applied it 
to the women with their tongues and worked away 
at the Constitution with a calking-iron. 

The month of May, 1853, found Mr. Phillips in 
New York City, whither the American Anti-Slavery 
Society had returned for its anniversary after its 
exile of two years. Baron Munchausen tells a story 
of a musician who, playing a tune in Russia, had it 
frozen, and who, being in Italy the following sum- 
mer, was surprised to hear the balance of the tune 
come pealing forth — thawed out in that mild climate. 
So the orator resumed his speech at the point where 
Captain Rynders had stopped it, and poured it out 
triumphantly. In the course of his remarks, he re- 
ferred to the offer of the Rev. Dr. Orville Dewey, 
an eminent Unitarian clerg3^m.an, to return (or as he 
afterward amended it, to consent to the return of) his 
mother into slavery if that were necessary to save 
the Union. Thereupon a hurricane of cheers and 
hisses, long-continued, broke forth. He • paused 
blandly, and wheit the storm had subsided, said 
quietly : " For once I have the whole audience with 
me ; some of you are applauding me, and the rest 
are hissing Dr. Dewey!" This sally was followed 
by great laughter and loud cheers — no hisses ! "^ 

' Austin's " Life and Times of Wendell Phillips," p. 159. 
^ Vide Liberator^ vol. xxiii., last week in May. 



262 WENDELl. PMILLH\^. 

The Woman Suffragists, who were in session at 
the same time, were not so fortunate as the AboH- 
tionists. Their Convention was transformed into a 
Bedlam, — their speakers derided, — their proceed- 
ings parodied, — their earnest made a jest. Wendell 
Phillips spoke on their platform ; but against a tem- 
pest and in interjections.' 

In an address which he delivered in Boston, two 
weeks later, he gave a fine definition of the respec- 
tive functions of the reformer and the politician. It 
is worth noting : 

" The reformer is careless of numbers, disregards popularity, 
and deals only with ideas, conscience, and common-sense. He 
feels, with Copernicus, that as God waited long- for an inter- 
preter, so he can wait for his followers. He neither expects nor 
is over-anxious for immediate success. The politician dwells 
in an everlasting Now. His motto is ' Success ' — his aim, votes. 
His object is not absolute right, but, like Solon's laws, as much 
right as the people will sanction. His office is, not to instruct 
public opinion, but to represent it. Thus, in England, Cobden, 
the reformer, created sentiment, and Peel, the politician, stereo- 
typed it into statutes." ^ 

It was in 1833, and in Philadelphia, that the Amer- 
ican Anti-Slavery Society was organized.^ It was 
now 1853 — ^i^d the Abolitionists determined to cele- 
brate the twentieth anniversary. Accordingly, they 
sped from all directions Quaker-Cityward arid jubi- 
lated, with the pioneers to tell the stor}^ of ^^esterda}-, 
and with Phillips to speak for to-day." " In the 
matter of voting," remarked Mr. Phillips, " I will 
be Mordecai at the gate." In another year the so- 



' Austin's " Life and Times of Wendell Phillips," pp. 148-51. 

^ Vide Liberator^ vol. xxiii., p. 97. 

^ An/e, p, 71. ^ l^ic/^ Liberator^ vol. xxiii., p. 192. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 263 

ciety would be twenty-one — old enough to vote ! 
Phillips might get up and cast a ballot. But he 
never did, until he rose to see Haman hung ! 

In those times of excitement, the Anti-Slavery 
Convention, naturally enough, attracted cranks, as 
a magnet draws iron filings. A character of this 
sort was a certain Abigail Folsom. She was a harm- 
less soul, sane on most subjects, but a monomaniac 
regarding free speech — which she esteemed a right 
on her part to silence everybody else in order to 
have her say in season and out of season. Emerson 
wittily nicknamed her "the flea of conventions." 
She was often removed from the halls she infected 
and afflicted by gentle force. As she was a non-re- 
sistant, she never struck back, save with her tongue, 
which was keen enough. One day, Mr. Phillips, 
with two others, placed her in a chair and were 
carrying her down the aisle through a crowd, when 
she exclaimed : 

" I'm better off than my Master was ; He had but 
one ass to ride — I have three to carry me !" ' 

Abigail Folsom was with, not of, the Abolitionists. 
Oddities, however, abounded among them — men and 
women of the most original type. Individualism 
ran mad. There, for example, was Parker Pills- 
bury, who started for the pulpit, and brought up on 
the platform ; who set out orthodox, and ended in 
unbelief ; who had broad shoulders surmounted by 
an enormous head ; who carried " a crater in each 
eye," and rumbled like a human ^tna. 

By his side stood a couple yet more unique — 
Stephen S. Foster and Abby Kelley, his wife. She, 



Garrison and his Times," p. 304*^ 



264 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

a "Judith turned Quakeress," — he, a non-resistant 
in profession and a gladiator in practice, who smote 
his opponents with the olive branch ; she, courage- 
ous with the bravery of an indomitable purpose, —he, 
brave, too, but, like the Irishman at " Donnybrook 
Fair," carrying a chip on his shoulder which he 
dared any one to knock off, and inviting a row ; she, 
charged with the collection of the Abolition revenues, 
— he, by his pugnacious utterances, angering the half- 
friends who might have given into the wish to knock 
him down rather than contribute. Lowell, who 
knew and co worked with both, has portrayed them 
with exquisite fidelity. Of Abby he says : 

" No nobler gift of heart or brain, 
No life more white from spot or stain, 
Was e'er on Freedom's altar laid 
Than hers—the Simple Quaker maid." 

Mr. Foster he hits off with rare humor : 

" Hard by, as calm as summer even, 
Smiles the reviled and pelted Stephen ; 
Who studied mineralogy 
Not v^rith soft book upon the knee. 
But learned the properties of stones 
By contact sharp of flesh and bones, 
And made the experime7ituin cruets 
With his own body's vital juices ; 
A kind of maddened John the Baptist, 
To whom the harshest word comes aptest. 
Who, struck by stone or brick ill-starred. 
Hurls back an epithet as hard, 
Which, deadlier than stone or brick, 
Has a propensity to stick." 

It was remarked of a well-known Baptist clergy- 
man, of a controversial temper, that he baptized his 
converts in hot water. So did many of the Garriso- 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 265 

nians. As the chronic invalid, when asked how he 
was, always said ** he enjoyed poor health," so they 
seemed, some of them, to enjoy their unpopularity, 
and to court it. 

There were those among the Garrisonians, too, 
who had adopted every ism of the day. These they 
sifted into their Anti-Slavery utterances, and thus 
produced the impression that Abolitionism was the 
nucleus of every scatter-brain theory and Utopian 
enterprise. Mr. Garrison himself was a sinner in 
this respect. He had now given up all his earlier 
religious views — was an anti-Bible man, — an anti- 
Sabbatarian, — a no-government exponent, as well as 
an Abolitionist. Because he held and taught such 
doctrines, the community naturally concluded that 
these were a normal part of Abolitionism — all the 
more because he mixed them. Of course, Mr. Gar- 
rison had a right to his opinions. But it was not 
good generalship to load down a cause already suffi- 
ciently odious by identifying it with other and unre- 
lated issues which were yet more unpopular. " One 
war at a time," as Lincoln said.. He should have 
emphatically distinguished between what was Aboli- 
tionism and what was not, in expressing his convic- 
tions, and should have made the line of demarkation 
broad as Boston Bay, high as Bunker Hill monu- 
ment — unmistakable. 

Mr. Phillips did not share in the vagaries of some 
of his friends. Nevertheless, he had to bear the 
odium ; which he did uncomplainingly — too uncom- 
plainingly. It was the glory of the Anti-Slavery 
platform that it made room for both sexes, all colors, 
and every creed. There was the more reason, there- 
fore, that each should define his own position. But 



266 WENDELL PHlLLIPi^. 

the cosmopolitan character of the Abolitionists was 
magnificent and sensible. If a general should call 
for volunteers to go into a forlorn hope, as one and 
another slipped out from the ranks, it would not 
occur to him to inquire into the religious ideas of 
this, and the home relations of that, and the financial 
condition of the other. In building railroads or or- 
ganizing banks. Episcopalians, Baptists, Quakers, 
Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Roman Catholics, 
and atheists combine. They surrender nothing of 
their individual belief in doing so. They come 
together for a specific cause, and, reserving their 
separate interests for other hours, unite for the pros- 
ecution of the common purpose. Precisely so with 
the Abolitionists. Members of all sects and of none 
might consistently join in a movement against slav- 
erv. As soon, however, as a sifting in of outside 
opinions began, there was a necessity laid upon 
everybody to protest and define ; while the result 
enabled the Pro-Slavery spectators to identify Anti- 
Slavery with Bedlam. We repeat, it was a disas- 
trous error, and it robbed the Garrisonians of influ- 
ence and a following which they might otherwise 
have held. 

The contrast between Mr. Phillips and some of his 
confreres was so striking that audiences familiar with 
them but which had never heard him, were amazed 
when he appeared before them. His patrician bear- 
ing, his unobtrusive but self-evident scholarship, his 
common-sense uttered in such gorgeous sentences, 
— made him as " Hyperion to a satyr/' 



XX. 

EXCITEMENT. 

In 1854 Congress passed the Nebraska Bill — an 
apple of contention thrown by the goddess of dis- 
cord. In effect, it repealed the Missouri Compro- 
mise, which had dedicated to freedom whatever ter- 
ritory lay north of Mason and Dixon's Hne, and rele- 
gated to the inhabitants themselves the question as 
to whether slavery should be domesticated in the 
vast lands included under the name of Nebraska. 
That is to say, Kansas, Montana, and parts of 
Dakota, Wyoming, and Colorado, were opened to 
slavery, provided the South could colonize them. 
The section immediately concerned was Kansas, 
which the slave-holders had already entered in great 
numbers, and which might soon be expected to be- 
come a State. The other sections were, as yet, un- 
populated, but were certain to be arenas of strife as 
last as they were reached. The Compromise meas- 
ures of 1850 had foreshadowed that which the Ne- 
braska Bill made the permanent policy and deliber- 
ate practice of the Union. Such was the doctrine 
known as " Squatter Sovereignty." 

To say that it revived and intensified sectional 
rivalry, is like speaking of the Civil War as an " un- 
pleasantness. ' ' The country was aflame. A stupen- 
dous race into Kansas began in the South, and from 
the North, and Kansas itself was straightway trans- 



268 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

formed into a bloody battleground — the opening 
skirmish of the impending revolution. 

With a host of others, Mr. Phillips exerted himself 
to expose and defeat the Nebraska Bill ; and when it 
passed, he redoubled his efforts with voice and purse 
to hasten Northern immigration to Kansas in order 
to secure it for freedom. He no longer stood alone. 
His views of the Union, — of its Pro-Slavery char- 
acter and tendency, were widely adopted, — and his 
remedy was more and more seriously considered, 
jf In Februar}^ 1854, he visited New York City and 
spoke in the Broadway Tabernacle on *' Squatter 
Sovereignty," and in doing so treated the whole 
question of slavery. " Straws show which way the 
wind blows." That it was now blowing North is 
shown by the following notice of his lecture, taken 
from the conservative Evening Post : 

" The distinguished orator of Abolitionism, Mr. Wendell 
Phillips, held forth on his favorite topic on Tuesday evening to 
an audience which completely crowded the Tabernacle, and it 
must be admitted that in all respects a more desirable audience 
could not have been selected from the population of the city. It 
marks a great change in the public sentiment, when a gathering 
like that of Tuesday night can sit for two hours and a quarter 
and listen, not merely with patience, but with manifest delight 
to a presentation of unadulterated Abolitionism. Mr. Phillips 
is certainly an orator of the highest order. In addition to rhe- 
torical accomplishments that outrival those of Mr. Everett, he 
exhibits a sincerity and naturalness which his compeer is obliged 
to counterfeit. The lecture was a felicitous recast of Mr. Phil- 
lips's familiar views ; but the untiring enthusiasm and graceful 
eloquence of the speaker constantly evoked expressions of ap- 
proval from the listeners." 

We know now, what men only surmised then, that 
the Southern leaders were confederated to rule or 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 269 

ruin. They were ruling at present. Tliey were 
also deliberately preparing to ruin on the first evi- 
dence that the sceptre would depart from Judah. 
Meantime they omitted no opportunity to exasperate 
Northern sentiment. The Fugitive Slave Law was 
enforced with special and diabolical thoroughness, 
as a master measure of provocation. 

The Anthony Burns case occurred in Ma}^, 1854. 
Burns had escaped from Richmond, Va., in the pre- 
ceding February, and was now hiding in Boston. 
At eight o'clock in the evening he was arrested, on 
a false charge, as usual in such cases, hurried to the 
court-house and concealed — no one being admitted 
to see him but the slave-claimant, the United States 
Marshal, and the police.* The next morning, the 
fugitive, ignorant, confused, trembling, friendless, 
was hustled before the United States Commissioner, 
Edward G. Loring, who was also a Massachusetts 
Judge of Probate. This heartless judge was about 
to deliver him to his master (not God, but one Col- 
onel Seattle), when by accident Richard H. Dana, 
Jr., entered the court- room. Grasping the situa- 
tion, he rose, protested against the indecent haste, 
and secured an adjournment of the hearing for two 
days.' 

It was anniversary week in Boston. The city was 
full of strangers in attendance upon the Anti- Slavery, 
the Women's Rights, and other conventions. The 
news circulated like wild-fire. ** Since the Revolu- 
tion," wrote Mr. Garrison in the Liberator of that 
week, ** Boston has never witnessed such a popular 
excitement, — the commonwealth has never been so 



* Phillips's " Speeche»," p. 185. * Ib.^ pp, 186-92. 



2/0 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

convulsed.*** Faneuil Hall was flung open and 
thronged. Phillips and Parker were the orators, 
and their words were thunderbolts. " I do not be- 
lieve in Squatter Sov^ereignty in Kansas," declared 
the former, " and I hold Kidnapper Sovereignty to 
be more infamous in the streets of Boston." ^ He 
went on to quote the saying of Judge Harrington, 
of Vermont, away back in the first decade of the 
century, who, when asked to return a runaway 
slave, refused on the ground of insufficient evidence. 
" What would you regard as sufficient?" asked the 
claimant. *' Nothing short of a bill of sale from 
Almighty God !" was the reply. ^ 

While the " Cradle of Liberty" was being rocked, 
an effort was simultaneously made by an excited 
crowd to rescue Burns, but failed through a mis- 
understanding and the lack of concert. Parker knew 
of it — Phillips did not.* 

In the meanwhile President Pierce and the Mayor 
of Boston concentrated all the military and civic 
powers within reach to overawe the New England 
capital — ^just as Lord North had done two gener- 
ations before ; Commissioner Loring delivered the 
unhappy black to his alleged owner ; and an army 
carried him down State Street, over the very ground 
where Crispus Attucks, a colored man, fell as the 
first victim of British tyranny in resisting the red- 
coats ; and Burns was flung manacled into the hold 
of a vessel bound for Virginia, — the latest, and, 
thank God ! the last victim in Boston of American 
law.' 



* Vide Liberator^ vol. xxiii., p. 86. * lb. ' lb. 
^ Higginson's " Obituary Notice of Wendell Phillips," p. (> 

* Vide Liberator^ vol, xisiii,, p. 91. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 2/1 

The Liberator painted the scene and called atten- 
tion to the fact that the whole city hissed and jeered 
the infamous procession — the most conservative, 
even ; a great change in public opinion since the 
Sims case.' There was not yet enough Anti-Slavery 
feeling to prevent the rendition ; but the Abolition- 
ists had been successful in making it despicable. 
Further proof of this was given when Wendell Phil- 
lips, who had been absent from the sessions looking 
after Burns, came into the Anti-Slavery Convention 
on the night of May 30th, and was received with 
tumultuous cheers, which were repeated again and 
again after he had spoken in the strains of his Faneuil 
Hall address.^ 

The Abolitionists were in the habit of celebrating 
the Fourth of July in a lovely grove, at Framing- 
ham, just out of Boston. At their gathering this 
year, Mr. Phillips related an incident in connection 
with the Burns case, which shows how much more 
strongly some men are influenced by sectarian than 
by humanitarian motives : 

" I met a man a week after Burns was surrendered, and he 
asked me : * Mr. Phillips, was Burns really a Baptist exhorter, 
regularly licensed ? ' Said I : 'He was, sir, a Baptist exhorter, 
regularly licensed.' ' Well,' said he, ' I didn't take much inter- 
est in the case : but when I heard that Major-General Edmunds 
had sent back a brother Baptist, I couldn't sleep ! ' He took no 
interest in the man — it was the Baptist. He heard the mere 
fact of a human being surrendered as a chattel — and went about 
his business. But when he learned that one Baptist had surren- 
dered another Baptist, — // disturbed his slumber /" ^ 

The Phillipses passed that summer in Milton : 
" One of the most deUghtful of our country towns 



Vide Liberator^ vol, xxiii., p. 91, ' lb., p. 94. ^ /^^ 



2/2 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

(wrote the orator, on August /th, to Miss Pease). 
Ann's brother has a place here, and we are with 
him." ^ He goes on to open his heart to his fair 
sympathizer : 

" I would say something on the Burns case if I did not know 
you saw the Standard and Liberator, from whose columns you 
get so many particulars that a note like this can add little. 
'Twas the saddest week I ever passed. Men talked of the good 
we might expect for the cause, but I could not think then of the 
general cause, so mournful and sad arose ever before me the 
pleading eyes of the poor victim, when he sat and cast his case 
on our consciences, and placed his fate in our hands. I could 
not forget the man in the idea. Time has passed since, and I 
begin to think more of the three millions and less of the indi- 
vidual. The effect of his surrender under this infamous law has 
been, like * Uncle Tom ' and all such spasms, far less deep and 
general than thoughtless folks anticipated. We always gain at 
such times a few hundred and the old friends are strengthened, 
but the mass settle down very little different from before. 

" Indeed, the Government has fallen into the hands of the 
slave power completely. So far as national politics are con- 
cerned, we are beaten — there's no hope. We shall have Cuba 
in a year or two, Mexico in five ; and I should not wonder if 
efforts are made to revive the old slave trade, though perhaps 
unsuccessfully, as the Northern slave States, which live by the 
export of slaves, would help us in opposing that. Events hurry 
forward with amazing rapidity : we live fast here. The future 
seems to unfold a vast slave empire united with Brazil, and 
darkening the whole West. I hope I may be a false prophet, but 
the sky was never so dark. Our Union, all confess, must sever 
finally on this question. It is now with nine tenths only a ques- 
tion of time." "^ 

In the autumn, after safely bestowing his wife at 
No. 26 Essex Street, " dear, delightful, dusty spot," 
the Agitator went off on a lecturing tour, travelling 



^ " Memorial of Ann Phillips," p. 14. 

' " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. iii., p. 410 sq. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 273 

through Central New York as far West as Detroit, 
Mich., and returning by way of Philadelphia. He 
spoke everywhere to enthusiastic multitudes.' His 
tone may be caught from these lines, penned by one 
of the fathers of Anti-SIa\^ery, the Rev. Samuel May, 
of Syracuse, and published in the Liberator : 

" Wendell Phillips delivered to a crowded audience in our 
City Hall, the ablest speech I ever heard, even from him — which 
is equivalent to saying the ablest I ever heard. He showed that 
we have little to hope from parties, but much from the moral 
and religious sentiment, which must be aroused to abhor slavery, 
as we abhor sheep-stealing, piracy, and murder." ^ 

When he got home from this trip, Mr. Phillips 
was arrested. History has much to say of the 
" brace of Adamses," and nothing unworthy. Bos- 
ton, in these years, held another brace, a brace of 
Bens, suggestive of the first only by dishonorable 
contrast, — Benjamin R. Curtis, of the United States 
Supreme Court, and Benjamin F. Hallett, United 
States District-Attorney. The two Bens were will- 
ing (for a consideration) to figure as legal hounds in 
the national slave hunt. Accordingly, they indicted 
Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker for " ob- 
structing the process of the United States," meaning 
the Fugitive Slave Law. It is not probable that 
they expected to accomplish much as against the de- 
fendants. They only wished to impress the Admin- 
istration with a due sense of their official activity, 
and to secure preferment by licking the hand that 
could bestow it. Personally, they put the indict- 
ment on the ground of patriotism — forgetful of Dr. 
Johnson's apothegm : " Patriotism is the last refuge 



' Vide Libcratcyr, vol. xxiii., p. 183. ' lb., vol, xxiv., p. 19,^, 



274 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

of a scoundrel." So Wendell and Theodore were 
each held in $1500 to answer. They were not much 
troubled to get bail. Phillips's sureties were six, 
viz., George William Phillips (his brother), the Rev. 
Samuel May, William I. Bowditch, Francis Jack- 
son, Robert E. x\lthorp, and Charles Ellis.' 

Parker, in a letter to Charles Sumner, jots down 
all this, and adds : " John Hancock was also once 
arrested by the British authorities, in October, 1768. 
Great attempts were made to indict Sam Adams, 
and Edes, and Gill, patriotic printers : but no grand 
jury then would find a bill." ' 

Sumner dashed back from Washington these lines 
in reply : " I regard your indictment as a call to a 
new parish with B. R. Curtis and B. F. Hallett as 
deacons, and a pulpit higher than Strassburg stee- 
ple." ^ At the same date he wrote to Mr. Phillips : 

" Well, Wendell, your Faneuil Hall speech anent poor Burns, 
and your treasonable efforts to humanize those whom the United 
States chattelizes, have at last, it should seem, overtaxed the 
mercy of a long-suffering Government ; and Franklin Pierce, 
by the worthy proxies of B. R. C. and B. F. H., has struck back. 
You are indicted ! What a small mouse for so big a mountain 
to bring forth — and after such prolonged travail, too. All right. 
' Everything helps us,' " * 

These cases never came to trial. Through tech- 
nical defects, the indictments were quashed.'' The 
brace of Bens had shown the South that they proudly 
wore the collar, — their object was attained, — they 
were now in the line of promotion. 

' Vide Liberator, vol. xxiv., p. 203. 

' Weiss's " Life of Theodore Parker," vol. ii., p. 144. '" lb. 

^ Letter to Wendell Phillips, December (ms.). 

^ Weiss's and Frothingham's biographies of Theodore Parker, in 
loco. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 2/5 

On December 21st Mr. Phillips lectured in Boston. 
Let the Courier, the most servile Pro-Slavery journal 
in Massachusetts, describe it : 

" Tremont Temple was crowded to its utmost capacity on 
Thursday night. Wendell Phillips was the orator of the even- 
ing. His subject was ' The Nature and Extent of the Anti- 
Slavery Feeling in New England,' and never were the splendid 
abilities of this most accomplished and able fanatic more amply 
displayed than on this occasion. Sentiments the most repug- 
nant to the feelings of every patriot were absolutely applauded 
when clothed in the magnificent diction of the Anti-Slavery 
Cicero. No pen can describe the gross injustice of the matter, 
nor the exquisite felicity of the manner of the Abolition orator." 

This extract suggests Balaam, who set out to curse 
Israel, and blessed it instead. 



XXI. 

GREAT EVENTS. 

Anti-Slavery Massachusetts had now two objects 
at heart. One was the removal from the Probate 
Judgeship of Edward G. Loring, who as United 
States Commissioner had returned Anthony Burns 
to Virginia. The other was the making such acts 
impossible within her borders in future. Petitions 
praying for legislative intervention choked the mails 
and reached the State House in vast numbers, with 
signatures from Cape Cod to the Berkshire hills. 
Who should present them ? Who should mature 
the needful action ? The popular choice instinctively 
selected the fittest man alive — Wendell Phillips. 

It was a task quite to his liking. On February 
2oth, 1855, he went before a designated committee 
of the Legislature, with the commonwealth for a 
client, and pleaded for the removal of Judge Loring. 
Competent legal critics pronounced his argument 
worthy to rank with the impeachment speeches of 
Burke and Sheridan, when Warren Hastings was 
on trial in Westminster Hall — with the loftiest fo- 
rensic efforts of Brougham and Erskine.' Rufus 
Choate, a political opponent, said : " It is outra- 
geously magnificent." ' As it lies in the printed vol- 



' Lawyers, for example, like Sumner, Richard H. Dana, Jr. .Ed- 
ward L. Pierce, and Samuel H. Sewall. 
' His remark to Senator Sumner, 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 277 

ume of the orator's speeches/ it is unnecessary to 
attempt a summary. The effect was electric. The 
Legislature voted to remove the disgraced official.'' 
Temporarily the Governor checkmated the will of 
the people by a veto / ultimately, the measure was 
signed and sealed, and Loring, judge no longer, 
stepped down and out." 

Simultaneously Avith these proceedings,. Mr. Phil- 
lips presented and argued the question of a ** Per- 
sonal Liberty Act." It is enough to say of this 
argument that it takes rank with the other. It is 
remarkable for the same passion for freedom, — the 
same profound knowledge of the law, — the same ex- 
haustive marshalling of authorities, — the same lumi-. 
nous reasoning. This, too, was successful — the act 
was adopted with an hurrah.' What were its pro-, 
visions ? Read : 

'* Habeas Corpus was secured to the alleged fugitive ; no con- 
fessions of his were admissible, but the burden of proof was to 
be upon the claimant, and no ex parte affidavit was to be re- 
ceived. For a State office-holder to issue a warrant under the 
law was tantamount to a resignation ; for an attorney to assist 
the claimant was to forfeit his right to practice in the State 
courts ; for a judge to do either was to make himself liable to 
impeachment or removal by address. No United States Com- 
missioner under the Fugitive Slave Law should hold any State 
office. No sheriff, jailer, or policeman should help arrest a 
fugitive, no jail receive him. The militia should not be called 
out on the claimant's behalf. The Governor should appoint 



* Vide " Speeches," pp. 1^4-212. 

^ Vide Liberator, vol. xxv., p 82. ^ lb. 

* lb., vol. xxviii., pp. 42, 46, 5c. The removal was finally made in 
the spring of 1858. 

*' Acts and Resolves of Massachusetts," p. 924. 



2/8 " WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

County Commissioners to defend fugitives and secure them a 
fair trial." ' 

Thorough ? Of course — was not Mr. PhilUps sub- 
stantially its author ? Efficacious ? Yes— no fugi- 
tive slave was ever afterward remanded from the 
old Bay State, And the example proved contagious. 
State after State made haste to copy it." 

The various Anti-Slavery societies held their an- 
niversaries in New York and Boston in the May 
of 1855, the prevalent excitement and the famed 
vigor of their speakers making them the events of 
the week, 

" The people," wrote Mr. Phillips to a friend, *' never tire of 
listening to and applauding the most radical of our number. 
The Scotch proverb runs : 

' The king said, "Sail!" 
The wind said, " No !" ' 

No need to ask whether there was a voyage. So now when 
slavery says, ' Sail ! ' let liberty say, ' No ! ' " ' 

An occurrence which interested him greatly was 
the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the 
Garrison mob ; which took place in October, in the 
ver}^ hall (Stacy Hall) out of which Mayor Lyman 
had driven the ^vomen of Boston w^ho had assembled 
there to discuss the peculiar institution. Many of 
the heroines of 1835 were present in 1855, The 
scene was solemn and historic. Francis Jackson in 
the chair (the brave merchant who had made his 
house the asylum of free speech when the city 
tabooed it) ; Garrison on the platform ; Phillips 
inside now, instead of on the street \* sympathy, in 

^ *' William Lloyd Garrison," vol. iii., p. 416. ' li., pp. 459, 460. 
2 Letter from Wendell Phillips to Henry Ward Beecher (ms.). 
* Ante, p. 57. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 279 

place of riot ; — what a change ! Mr. Phillips for the 
benefit of posterity, recited the story of the mob, 
and did it as only he could, in words that fell at first 
in a golden shower, deepening at last into a rain of 
fire. 

"I thank these women," he said, in closing, "for all they 
have taught me. I had read Greek and Roman and English 
history ; I had by heart the classic eulogies of brave old men 
and martyrs ; I dreamed, in my folly, that I heard the same tone 
in my youth from the cuckoo lips of Edward Everett ;— these 
women taught me my mistake. They taught me that down in 
those hearts which loved a principle for itself, asked no man's 
leave to think or speak, true to their convictions, no matter at 
what hazard, flowed the real blood of '76, of 1640, of the hem- 
lock-drinker of Athens, and of the martyr-saints of Jerusalem. 
I thank them for it ! My eyes were sealed, so that, although I 
knew the Adamsgs and the Otises of 1776, and the Mary Dyers 
and Ann Hutchinsons of older times, I could not recognize the 
Adamses and Otises, the Dyers and the Hutchinsons, whom I 
met in the streets of '35. These women opened my eyes, and I 
thank them and you (turning to Mrs. Southwick and Miss Hen- 
rietta Sargent, who sat upon the platform) for that anointing. 
May our next twenty years prove us all apt scholars of such 
brave instruction !" ^ 

The autumn of 1855 was devoted by Mr. Phillips, 
after his custom, to lecturing. The Lyceum system 
was at its noon — that remarkable institution which 
gathered audiences throughout the free States to sit 
at the feet of the great speakers of the country. It 
was a kind of church without a creed, and with a 
constant rotation of clergymen ; a kind of party 
without a platform, and with orators of every opinion 
— neutral ground ; so that he who could give the 
best reason carried off the most honor. Beginning as 



^ " Speeches and Lectures," by Wendell Phillips, pp. 226, 227. 



28o WENDELL PHILLirS. 

a literary recreation, it became a continental rostrum 
where questions of any and every sort were dis- 
cussed. The political issues of the period were per- 
petually introduced. The utterances of the lecturers 
compromised no one save the lecturers themselves, 
and as the various lyceums endeavored to give all 
sides a hearing-, the system filled an important place 
in American life. This was the special realm of 
Wendell Phillips. Here he was king ; and his min- 
isters of state were Chapin, Beecher, Gough, Curtis, 
and no end of others, a motley and often an insur- 
gent multitude. The collision of opinions, the con- 
sequent sharpening of wits, and the toleration which 
resulted from hearing all sides, spiced these uncon- 
ventional assemblies, made them amazingly popular, 
and gave them rare educational value.* 

The New Englanders, then as now, were in the 
habit of observing the landing of the Pilgrims and 
kissing the Yankee Blarney-stone. William H. 
Seward was the orator at Plymouth in December, 
1855. His oration was a worthy tribute to the 
founders of empire on this side of the water. Phil- 
lips was present as a guest of the Plymouth Society, 
and spoke brilliantl}^ at the dinner-table. Plere is 
an illustrative story which he told : 

" The Phillipses, Mr. President, did not come from Plym- 
outh ; they made their longest stay at Andover. Let me tell 
you an Andover story. One day, a man went into a store there, 
and began telling about a fire. ' There had never been such a 
fire,' he said, ' in the county of Essex. A man going by Deacon 
Pettingill's barn savv^ an owl on the ridge-pole. He fired at the 
owl, and the wadding somehow or other, getting into the shingles, 
set the hay on fire, and it was all destroyed, — ten tons of hay, 
six head of cattle, the finest horse in the country, etc. The 
deacon was nearly crazed by it.' The men in the store began 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 28 I 

exclaiming and commenting on it. ' What a loss ! * says one. 
' Why, the deacon will well-nigh break down under it,' says an- 
other. And so they went on, speculating one after another, and 
the conversation drifted on in all sorts of conjectures. At last, 
a quiet man, who sat spitting in the fire, looked up, and asked, 
' Did he hit the owl ? ' {Timiuliuons applause?) That man 
was made for the sturdy reformer, of one idea, whom Mr. Seward 
described." ^ 

Events hurried. Alter a parliamentary struggle 
prolonged through two months, on February 2d, 
1856, the free States elected N. P. Banks Speaker 
of the Lower House of Congress — " the first gun at 
Lexington of the new revolution," said Mr. Garri- 
son.'^ This victory was soon followed by an act 
which made a universal spectacle of the barbarism 
that masqueraded as chivalry by transplanting to 
Washington the manners and habits of the planta- 
tion. In May, Senator Sumner spoke in the Senate 
on " The Crime against Kansas." On the 22d of 
the month, for words spoken in debate, Preston S. 
Brooks, a representative from South Carolina, as- 
saulted him. The attack was a blow at liberty ; the 
manner of it was an exposure of Southern " gallan- 
try." While Sumner sat at his desk engaged in 
writing. Brooks crept up behind him, and, without 
warning, struck him again and again upon the head 
with a heavy gutta-percha cane. The senator, half 
stunned by the blows, strove to rise and free himself 
from the restraint of the desk. He succeeded in 
wrenching it from the floor to which it was screwed, 
but fell unconscious in the endeavor to rise. Keitt, 
Douglass, Toombs, and other members of Congress 



' Phillips's " Speeches and Lectures," pp. 236, 237. 
2 Vide Liberator, vol. xxvi^ p. 23. 



^82 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

looked on in silence — in that kind of silence which 
gave consent. Sumner's fall saved his life. Had 
he risen and turned, Brooks, who was armed, would 
have shot him. Mason, of Virginia, Jefferson Davis, 
of Mississippi, leading senators, the Southern press, 
and sections of the Northern, applauded the deed.' 

So, then, the debate was to be one of bludgeons. 
The man-stealers and woman-whippers introduced 
into the halls of Congress their familiar home meth- 
ods of discussion. 

The wrath of the North was wide and hot. Indig- 
nation meetings abounded. Mr. Phillips regarded 
them with disgust. He held that the proper reply 
of Massachusetts would be to call home her repre- 
sentatives." He spent many years in trying to per- 
suade the North to adopt the remedy for the terrific 
evil of which such acts were the inevitable symp- 
toms, that the Civil War at length forced upon it — 
the remedy of non-complicity. In a statement of the 
attendant circumstances of the case, he notes it as 
a significant fact, suggestive of the extent to which 
Southern sympathy had infected the wealthy and 
fashionable circles in the North, that the leading 
citizens of Boston itself refused to take part in the 
gatherings to rebuke the deed ; and he adds : " When 
Mr. Sum.ner returned to Boston, November 3d, 1856, 
though received by crowds in the streets and by the 
State authorities, the windows of every house in 
Beacon Street (the elite quarter), through which he 
passed, except those of Prescott and Samuel Apple- 



' Phillips's Sketch of Sumner, in Johnson's A^ew Universal Cyclo* 
pcedia, in loco. 

■^ Vide his various speeches of ihe period in the Liberator. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 283 

ton, had their blinds closed to show indifference or 
contempt." ' 

Treading close upon the heels of the assault upon 
Sumner, came that history-making Convention at 
Philadelphia which organized the Republican part3\ 
The Free Soil part}- was now onh' a name. The 
Whig party was nothing but a memory — 

" Wicked but in will, of means bereft," 

its Pro-Slavery elements had been absorbed in the 
Democratic party, which the South had selected for 
its perfect service. Its Anti- Slavery constituents 
made overtures to the Free Soil chiefs and suggested 
a union. Recognizing the propriety of not requir- 
ing either to join the other, both suggested a new 
party with a new name. At the Quaker City, on 
June 17th, the fusion was consummated and the 
name was coined — the Republican party commenced 
its career. Amid unbounded enthusiasm the plat- 
form was adopted. It welcomed all, without regard 
to past differences, who were opposed to the repeal 
of the Missouri Compromise, — all who were against 
the extension of slavery into the Territories, — all who 
favored the admission of Kansas as a free State.'' 
John C. Fremont was nominated for the Presidency, 
and Jessie, his wife, became the rallying cry of the 
new political crusade. The enthusiasm of the Con- 
vention soon communicated itself to the country. 
Who that witnessed it can ever forget the canvass 
that followed, — the " wide-awake" clubs, — the torch- 
light processions, — the frenzied meetings, — the hur- 



^ Johnson's New Universal Cyclopcedia^ Phillips's Notice of Sumner. 
* Ib.^ Dana's article on the Republican party. 



284 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

rying to and fro, — the bombarding press, — the pas- 
sion of words, — the war of ballots ? The recollec- 
tion of those thrilling- scenes lives side by side with 
the outbreak of the Rebellion itself, of which, in- 
deed, the}^ were the prelude. 

James Buchanan was elected ; but by a narrow 
majority. The South forecast the future. The 
slave-holders drew their heads closer together and 
multiplied their conferences and their plots. 

Mr. Phillips welcomed the advent of the Republi- 
can party. He regarded its canvass as a public edu- 
cation. But he was too much of a seer to believe 
in its competency, with its avowed principles, to 
effect a cure of the national distemper. It afforded 
alleviation — nothing more. The Republican party 
clamored for the non-extension of slavery. He 
sought its death. The Republican party said, *' Lo- 
calize it." He knew that even though localized it 
would, in the very nature of things, continue to dis- 
tract and convulse. The Republican party said, 
** Slavery must let go of Kansas." He retorted, 
** Slavery must set every bondman free." The 
Republican party said, " Bind the maniac." He 
advised, " Cast out the devil." 

Presently God vindicated the wisdom of Mr. Phil- 
lips. 

With such convictions, he signed the call for a 
Disunion Convention, to be held in Worcester, 
Mass., in January, 1857. The Convention met on 
the 15th inst. with a large attendance.' Charles 
Francis Adams, Joshua R. Giddings, Amasa W^alker, 
Henry Wilson, and r)ther prominent men, sent let- 



' J^ide Liberator, vol. XX' ii , pp. 14, 27. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 285 

ters, — all in sympathy with the object of the Aboli- 
tionists, but in opposition to their methods/ Mr. 
Garrison spoke at length, and in advocacy of his 
familiar maxim of '* No Union with slave-holders." 
Mr. Phillips made two speeches, in which he criti- 
cised the limitations of the Republican propaganda ; 
reaffirmed his unalterable purpose to contend, not 
for the non-extension of slavery, but for its destruc- 
tion ; emphasized the fact that the Union of the free 
States with the slave States brought these into neces- 
sary complicity with those, by tying them together 
under a Pro-Slavery Constitution, by mortgaging 
the wealth and power of the North to the South, 
and by exposing liberty in one section to the demor- 
alizing influences of slavery in the other ; recited the 
history of the past in proof of it ; asserted the ability 
of the free States to form an unstained Union that 
should be strong as well as free ; and ended by de- 
claring his belief that the mere act of withdrawal 
would win the plaudits of civilization and go far to 
carry emancipation down to the Gulf.'' 

The tone of these speeches is calm, logical, phil- 
osophical. They are keen as the maxims of Roche- 
foucauld, racy as any pages of Dean Swift, sugges- 
tive as an essay by Emerson, and uncompromising 
as— Wendell Phillips. "The South," said he, "is 
eternally crying : ' Give us our way, or we will 
break up the Union ! ' Let us reply : ' Free your 
slaves, or we will dissolve it ! ' " This position had 
one supreme advantage : it met the slave-holders on 
their own ground, answered them in their own tone 
— everybody could understand it. 



* Vide Liberator, vol. xxvii., p. 15. ^ lb., pp. 18, 32. 



286 WENDELL PHILLIPS."" 

The Disunion Convention had hardly adjourned, 
when the oligarchy, speaking this time through the 
Supreme Court of the United States, announced a 
decision which emphasized the declarations of Mr. 
Phillips touching the Pro-Slavery character of the 
Union. Dred Scott, a negro slave, had been carried 
by his master, an army officer, into a free State. 
Here he married the slave woman of another officer. 
Both were sold and returned to Missouri ; where 
Scott sued for their freedom, alleging that their 
transportation into a free State had ipso facto worked 
their emancipation. The case was decided adversely 
in the State courts, — was appealed to the Supreme 
Court of the nation, — and now, Chief Justice Taney 
decided, in brief, that the Constitution recognized 
no distinction between slaves and other property ; 
that slaves, therefore, might be taken wherever other 
property might be taken ; that the Union was bound 
to protect property-owners against all assailants ; 
and that the black race, as beings of an inferior 
order, " had no rights which white men were bound 
to respect." ' 

Thus did the South put back of the various laws 
of Congress on the questions at issue, and back of 
the Constitution, the authoritative interpretation of 
the tribunal of last appeal. Slavery was sustained. 
The free State laws discriminating slave property 
from other property Avere unconstitutional and void. 
Slavery was national — freedom was sectional. 

" Well," commented Mr. Phillips, as he finished 
reading the dictum of Chief- Justice Taney, " on all 
the legal points involved, the Supreme Court sus- 



' Vide Liberator, voL xxvii., p. 45. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 287 

tains mj claims for a dozen years. It is infamous. 
But it is the law of the United States. How now 
about the Pro Slavery character of the Union ? Am 
I not right in seeking to withdraw ?" ^ 

The Dred Scott decision opened the eyes of the 
Northern leaders. For the first time they saw, 
what the Abolitionists had seen since 1843 — the ever- 
lasting impossibility of mixing oil and water, fire and 
snow,, life and death. The South had recognized it, 
too ; and had been striving with magnificent audacity 
for years and years to nationalize slavery, to sup- 
plant freedom, with only such resistance at the North 
as a little band of " fanatics" could make. Now, 
the Rip- Van- Winkle North awoke from its long 
sleep, rubbed its eyes, and realized that twice two 
are four ! Thus, Abraham Lincoln, in a speech at 
Springfield, 111., on June 17th, 1858, exclaimed : 
" ' A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I 
believe this Union cannot endure permanently half- 
slave and half-free." ' These words made the polit- 
ical fortune of Mr. Lincoln. Three years earlier, 
William Lloyd Garrison had uttered precisely the 
same words — and they fell on deaf ears.^ 

In the same strain spoke William H. Seward, on 
October 25th, 1858, at Rochester, N. Y. : '' Shall I 
tell you what this collision means ? They who think 
it is accidental, unnecessary, the work of interested 
and fanatical agitators, and therefore ephemeral, 
mistake the case altogether. It is an irrepressible 
conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and 



^ Letter to Theodore Parker (ms.). 

^ Vide Arnold's " Lincoln," p. 114. 

" " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. iii., p. 430. 



288 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

it means that the United wStates must and will, sooner 
or later, become either entirely a slave-holding na- 
tion or entirely a free-labor nation." ' 

This idea of an " irrepressible conflict" was as 
trite as the multiplication table to Mr. Phillips. He 
had been proclaiming it almost from the start, and 
had outlined the only adequate remedy — the de- 
struction of slaver}'. Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward 
had now reached the proclamation. They were still 
several years on the other side of the remedy. 

Hume, a Tory historian, thanks the Puritans for 
saving liberty in England. An American Hume 
will one day thank the Abolitionists for saving it 
here. 



' Quoted in the Likerat^r, voL xxviii., p. 177. 



XXII. 

IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT. 

Like a calm morning which scowls by and by in 
cloud and storm, so broke the year 1859. ^ ^^^ of 
the weather-wise ones scanned the horizon and dis- 
cerned the signs of the approaching tempest. Most 
listened incredulously, and trod on about their busi- 
ness. The disorders continued in Kansas. It was 
civil war in miniature. But the country had grown 
used to that. The South, complacent over the Dred 
Scott decision, and intrenched behind three lines of 
fortification, — the White House, Congress, and the 
Supreme Court, was resting on its arms. At the 
North, the Republicans were recruiting and drilling 
for the Presidential campaign of i860. 

The great anniversaries were held as usual, — the 
meetings crowded, — the speakers trenchant, — the 
discussions touching this and that phase of current 
affairs. On May 12th, Mr. Phillips spoke at a turbu- 
lent session of the National Women's Rights Con- 
vention, in New York City. One after the other, 
the orators of the occasion were driven oft the plat- 
form by cat-calls and yells, until he took it and for 
two hours did as he would with the mocking crowd. 
In closing he said : 

'* I have neither the disposition nor the strength to trespass 
any longer upon your attention. The subject is so large, that it 
might well fill days instead of hours. It covers the whole sur- 
face of American society. It touches religion, purity, political 



290 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

economy, wages, the safety of cities, the growth of ideas, the 
very success of our experiment. If this experiment of self-gov- 
ernment is to succeed, it is to succeed by some saving element 
introduced into the politics of the present day. You know this : 
your Webstcrs, your Clays, your Calhouns, your Douglases, 
however intellectually able they may have been, have never 
dared or cared to touch that moral element of our national life. 
Either the shallow and heartless trade of politics had eaten out 
their own moral being, or they feared to enter the unknown land 
of lofty right and wrong. 

" Neither of these great names has linked its fame with one 
great moral question of the day. They deal with money ques- 
tions, with tariffs, with parties, with State law ; and if, by 
chance, they touch the slave question, it is only like Jewish 
hucksters trading in the relics of saints. The reformers — the 
fanatics, as we are called — are the only ones who have launched 
social and moral questions. I risk nothing when I say, that the 
Anti-Slavery discussion of the last twenty years has been the 
salt of this nation : it has actually kept it alive and wholesome. 
Without it our politics would have sunk beyond even contempt. 
So with this question. It stirs the deepest sympathy ; it appeals 
to the highest moral sense ; it inwraps within itself the greatest 
moral issues. Jndge it, then, candidly, carefully, as Americans ; 
and let us show ourselves worthy of the high place to which God 
has called us in human affairs." ^ 

Two weeks later, Mr. Phillips addressed the New 
England section of the same reform. We subjoin 
two paragraphs : 

" Many a young girl, in her early married life, loses her hus- 
band, and thus is left a widow with two or three children. Now, 
who is to educate them and control them ? We see, if left to 
her own resources, the intellect which she possesses, and which 
has remained in a comparatively dormant state, displayed in its 
full power. What a depth of heart lay hidden in that woman 
She takes her husband's business, guides it as though it were a 
trifle ; she takes her sons, and leads them ; sets her daughters 



' Austin's " Life and Times of Wendell Phillips," pp. 164, 165. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 29 1 

an example ; like a master-leader she governs the whole house- 
hold. That is woman's influence. What made that woman ? 
Responsibility. Call her out from weakness, lay upon her soul 
the burden of her children's education, and she is no longer a 
girl, but a woman. 

" Horace Greeley once said to Margaret Fuller, ' If you should 
ask a woman to carry a ship around Cape Horn, how would she 
go to work to do it ? Let her do this, and I will give up the 
question.* In the fall of 1856 a Boston girl, only twenty years 
of age, accompanied her husband to California. A brain fever 
laid him low. In the presence of mutiny and delirium, she took 
his vacant post, preserved order, and carried her cargo safe to 
its destined port. Looking in the face of Mr. Greeley, Miss 
Fuller said, * Lo ! my dear Horace, it is done. Now, say, what 
shall woman do next ? ' " {Cheers.) * 

So passed the morning, so passed the noon of 1859. 
In the afternoon of the year Massachusetts did some- 
thing that stirred Mr. PhilKps to protest. The State 
permitted the statue of Webster to be placed in the 
State- House yard, with ostentat?bus ceremonies — 
Edward Everett eulogizing the recreant statesman 
who had gone over to the South in the " battle of 
the giants," and had bidden the commonwealth 
" smother its prejudices" and consent to hunt slaves. 

A few weeks later, on October 4th, Mr. Phillips 
opened the " Fraternit}^" lecture course — the most 
popular Lyceum platform in Boston. The result 
was his lecture on ** Idols," which, as a specimen of 
rhetoric and invective, is unexcelled. Referring to 
the statue, he said : 

" No man criticises when private friendship moulds the loved 
form in 

* Stone that breathes and struggles, 
Or brass that seems to speak.' 



^ Austin's " Life and Times of Wendell Phillips," p. 166. 



292 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Let Mr. Webster's friends crowd their own halls and grounds 
with his bust and statues. That is no concern of ours. But 
when they ask the State to join in doing him honor, then we 
claim the right to express an opinion. . . . We cannot but re- 
member that the character of the commonwealth is shown by 
the character of those it crowns. A brave old Englishman tells 
us the Greeks had officers who did pluck down statues if they 
exceeded due symmetry and proportion. ' We need such now,' 
he adds, ' to order monuments according to men's merits.' In- 
deed we do ! When I think of the long term and wide reach of 
his influence, and look at the subjects of his speeches, — the mere 
shells of history, drum-and-trumpet declamation, dry law, or 
selfish bickerings about trade,— when I think of his bartering 
the hopes of four millions of bondmen for the chances of his 
private ambition, I recall the criticism on Lord Eldon, — ' No 
man ever did his race so much good as Eldon prevented.' 
Again, when I remember the close of his life spent in ridiculing 
the Anti-Slavery movement as useless abstraction, moonshine, 
' mere rub-a-dub agitation,' because it did not minister to trade 
and gain, methinks I seem to see written all over his statue 
Tocqueville's conclusiofi from his survey of French and Ameri- 
can democracy, — ' The man who seeks freedom for anything 
but freedom's self, is made to be a slave ! ' " ^ 

The echo of these sentences had hardly died 
away when others were heard, sharper, fiercer, 
more deadly — the echoes of John Brown's rifles 
among the hills of Virginia ! 

John Brown was a regular Cromwellian dug up 
from Naseby and Marston Moor. He was an Old 
Testament Christian, whose war-cry was, " The 
sword of the Lord and of Gideon." Going to Kan- 
sas, he had come in collision there with the ' ' border 
ruffians" who swarmed across the boundaries of Mis- 
souri as the agents of slavery, and as a free-State 



^ " Speeches and Lectures," by Wendell Phillips, pp. 254, 259, 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 293 

chieftain had won fame as a Marion or Sumter. He 
was a devout guerilla of freedom. In person, tall, 
spare, farmer-like, he was built for roughing it.* 

In order to understand this man, we must acquaint 
ourselves with his character and surroundings. 
Those marchings and countermarchings, yonder on 
the wild frontier, the skirmishes in Kansas, inter- 
spersed with occasional forays across the border into 
Missouri to snatch slaves into liberty, had taught 
him to feel that war already existed, and had sug- 
gested the invasion of the South at other and unsus- 
pecting points. Accordingly, he came East in 1858, 
for the purpose of enlisting the co-operation of 
friends here in his plans. He saw Parker, Higgin- 
son, Sanborn, and secured their aid. Garrison was 
a non-resistant ; hence an impossible confidant. 
Phillips was conducting a movement on the basis of 
moral suasion ; therefore not likely to exchange 
ideas for rifles.' These two he met, but he shut 
them out from his confidence. Having secured men 
and material in modest measure, John Brown went 
into the neighborhood of Harper's Ferry, and on the 
night of October i6th, 1859, pounced upon the town, 
seized the United States Armory, and, with eighteen 
comrades, held the place for twenty-four hours. 
Then he was fought back into an engine-house, 
wounded, and finally captured by a file of United 
States marines sent from Washington, and com- 
manded by Colonel Robert E. Lee, afterward gen- 
eral of the Confederate armies. Eight of his band 
were killed, six were captured, four escaped.' 



» Vide** The Life of John Brown," by F. B. Sanborn. 

» /*. * /*., p. 552. 



294 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

What followed ? Everybody knows. John Brown 
was indicted for " murder and other crimes," — tried, 
— convicted, — and, on December 2d, 1859, hung. 
Thus ended the Bunker Hill of the second Revolu- 
tion. 

Between the emeute and the execution many and 
stirring scenes were enacted. The slave-holders 
were naturally affrighted. Their thoughts by day, 
their dreams by night were haunted by spectres of 
insurrection. Northern sentiment was divided. The 
coolness and bravery of "old Ossawatomie," as he 
was called, after the town in Kansas where he dwelt, 
his self-sacrifice for a hated race, his tenderness, as 
shown in the caress of a negro child on the way to 
the scaffold, a dozen stories told of his prudence, 
skill, and courage on the border, — made him the 
hero of the hour. Nor did his scheme appear so 
insane at last as it did at first. For he entered Vir- 
ginia — why ? He told his captors in the wonderful 
address which he delivered to the court : 

" I deny everything but what I have all along admitted — the 
design on my part to free the slaves. I intended, certainly, to 
have made a clean thing of the matter, as I did last winter, when 
I went into Missouri, and there took slaves without the snapping 
of a gun on either side, moved them through the country, and 
finally left them in Canada. I designed to have done the same 
thing again, on a larger scale. That was all I intended. I 
never did intend murder, treason, or the destruction of prop- 
erty, or to excite or incite slaves to rebellion, or to make insur. 
rection." * 

He had succeeded in Missouri ; why not in Vir- 
ginia ? There he was sane enough ; why crazy 
here? 



» Sanborn's '* Life of John Brown." 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 295 

Comedy and tragedy are close akin. In the midst 
of the drama, it was laughable to hear the various 
comments. " What a pity he did not succeed !" 
" Why didn't he march off with his victory during 
the first twenty-four hours?" "What an outrage, 
to try a man while wounded and lying on a pallet !" 
Such were the utterances of all sorts of people in the 
streets, on the cars, at the fireside — indicative of 
widespread sympathy.' The truth is, the South 
had been attacking the North on John Brown's prin- 
ciple, for years — in Kansas, for example, and in the 
blow at Sumner. This was only tit for tat. The 
North widely recognized it. Even conservatives 
felt a silent satisfaction, which was occasionally and 
grudgingly expressed as in the remark of a promi- 
nent Democrat in New York City : " I hope it will 
teach the South that playing with fire is danger- 
ous. 

Although Mr. Phillips had not been in John 
Brown's secret, he was profoundly stirred by his 
heroism. The orator had spent his life in the en- 
deavor to avoid the need of precisely such methods. 
He now realized that a new phase of the struggle 
was at hand. On November ist, 1859, ^^ lectured 
in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, and took " Harper's 
Ferry" for a text. The lecture was as sensational 
as the occasion. It is sensational even as read to-day 
in the secltision of the library. Turn over a leaf or 
two : 

" Has the slave a right to resist his master ? I will not argue 
that question 10 a people hoarse with shouting ever since July 



' '* Speeches and Lectures," by V^endell Phillips, p. 286. 
* So said the Hon. Daniel S. Dickinson to John F. Dix, afterward 
Governor of New York. 



296 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

4th, 1776, that all men are created equal, that the right to liberty 
is inalienable, and that * resistance to tyrants is obedience to 
God.' But may he resist to blood — with rifles ? What need of 
proving that to a people who load down Bunker Hill with gran- 
ite, and crowd their public squares with images of Washington ; 
ay, worship the sword so blindly that, leaving their oldest states- 
men idle, they go down to the bloodiest battle-field in Mexico to 
drag out a President ? But may one help the slave resist, as 
Brown did ? Ask Byron on his death-bed in the marshes of 
Missolonghi. Ask the Hudson as its waters kiss your shore, 
what answer they bring from the grave of Kosciusko. I hide the 
Connecticut Puritan behind Lafayette, bleeding at Brandywine, 
in behalf of a nation his rightful king forbade him to visit. 

" But John Brown violated the law. Yes. On yonder desk lie 
the inspired words of men who died violent deaths for breaking 
the laws of Rome. Why do you listen to them so reverently ? 
Huss and Wickliffe violated laws ; why honor them ? George 
Washington, had he been caught before 1783, would have died 
on the gibbet, for breaking the laws of his sovereign. Yet I 
have heard that man praised within six months. Yes, you say, 
but these men broke bad laws. Just so. It is honorable, then, 
to break bad laws, and such law-breaking history loves and God 
blesses ! Who says, then, that slave laws are not ten thousand 
times worse than any those men resisted } Whatever argument 
excuses them, makes John Brown a saint." ^ 

In the midst of this excitement, Mr. Phillips, who 
had been in Philadelphia a few days before, where a 
threatened mob did not act, wrote to Miss Grew : 

" These are stirring times and hopeful for the cause. I am 
glad the mobocrat- liked me, though some radical might think 
his liking an equivocal compliment ; but I accept it heartily. It 
comports with my philosophy. I have become so notorious 



' " Speeches and Lectures," pp. 279 sq. 

' The " mobocrat" was a highly distinguished leader of riots in 
Philadelphia, who was, on one occasion, so entirely captivated by 
Mr. Phillips's eloquence that he sat quietly through his lecture, and 
held in restraint the men whom he had led thither for the purpose of 
breaking up the meeting. 



WENi3ELL PHILLIPS. 29/ 

that at Albany, Kingston, and Hartford, the Lyceum could not 
obtain a church for me ; and the papers riddled me with pellets 
for a week ; but that saved advertising and got me larger houses 
gratis. At Troy they even thought of imitating Staten Island 
and getting up a Homoeopathic mob, but couldn't." ' 

Mr. Phillips's marvellous power of rapid thought 
combined with peerless expression, is well known to 
those who frequently heard him in lectures or de- 
bate. It was illustrated on the occasion referred to 
in the letter just quoted, when he delivered in Phila- 
delphia his lecture on " Toussaint L'Ouverture. " 
The execution of the death-sentence of John Brown 
was near at hand. Mr. Phillips, on his arrival in the 
city, in the morning, was told that his evening audi- 
ence would expect him to speak of that appalling 
fact. He replied that it had no connection with the 
lecture which he had been invited to deliver ; that 
an interpolated passage upon another subject was 
scarcely to be thought of. But he was assured that, 
whether it belonged to the lecture or not, the de- 
mand was imperative ; speak upon it he must. 

From the time of his arrival in the city, in the 
morning, until his appearance upon the platform, in 
the evening, with the exception of some fifteen min- 
utes, he was surrounded by his friends, and occupied 
with social converse. Yet he introduced into that 
lecture an eloquent and thrilling passage concerning 
John Brown, which so marvellously fitted into it 
that it might have been an original portion of it. 

While John Brown lay in prison awaiting execu- 
tion, a meeting was held in Boston to raise funds for 
the relief of his impoverished family. John A. An- 



^ Letter to Miss Grew (ms.). An attempt was made to mob him on 
Staten Island about this time, but failed. 



29S WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

drew presided. Emerson represented New Eng- 
land letters. Phillips stood for the negro race, on 
whose behalf the hero was condemned. The Rev. 
J. M. Manning, of the " Old South " Church, said : 
" I am here to represent the church of Sam Adams 
and Wendell Phillips ; and I want all the world to 
know that I am not afraid to ride in the coach w^hen 
Wendell Phillips sits on the box." ' 

When she had strangled the soul out of it, Vir- 
ginia delivered the body of John Brown to his 
friends. They took it reverently and laid it in the 
grave at North Elba, his old home, vv^ith the Adiron- 
dacks for a monument. Mr. Phillips met the cortege 
in New York City, and journeyed thence to the final 
resting-place. Standing by the grave he pronounced 
the burial address, from which we give an extract : 

" Marvellous old man ! ... He has abolished slavery in 
Virginia. You may say this is too much. Our neighbors are 
the last men we know. The hours that pass us are the ones we 
appreciate the least. Men walked Boston streets, when night 
fell on Bunker Hill, and pitied Warren, saying, ' Foolish man ! 
Thrown away his life ! Why didn't he measure his means bet- 
ter .'* ' Now we see him standing colossal on that blood stained 
sod, and severing that day the tie which bound Boston to Great 
Britain, That night George HI. ceased to rule in New England. 
History will date Virginia emancipation from Harper's Ferry. 
True, the slave is still there. So, when the tempest uproots a 
pine on your hills, it looks green for months, — a year or two. 
Still, it is timber, not a tree. John Brown has loosened the 
roots of the slave system ; it only breathes, — it does not live, — 
hereafter." "• 

This w^as a long look ahead. It was prophecy 
then and history at last. Philosophers love to trace 



' Reminiscences by Charles W. Slack, of Boston. 
' " Speeches and Lectures," p . 290. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS.. 299 

the result to the cause, — to find the result in the 
cause. Phillips did this at North Elba. In the act- 
ual John Brown he saw a million possible ones ; and 
in the possibilit}^ he beheld the end. 

There was a Star-Cham ber inquiry at Washington 
for the men who had aided and abetted John Brown. 
Theodore Parker, T. \V. ITigginson, F. B. Sanborn, 
and others, were suspected ; but no papers could be 
found. The}' existed ! Mr. Phillips brought a bud- 
get of them from North Elba, which he placed for 
safe keeping in the hands of Governor John A. An- 
drew, and which at a later day the Governor re- 
turned to the respective writers.' Had these been 
discovered, John Brown would not have hung alone. 



* Recollections of F. B. Sanborn (MS.). 



XXIIl. 

THE WINTER OF SECESSION. 

In Macbeth, the witch stirs the pot and utters her 

incantation : 

" Black spirits and white, 
Red spirits and gray." 

So now all kinds of spirits, good, bad, nondescript, 
materialized, each paramount in turn. Over all, 
however, was the Spirit of Providence ! 

The spirit of sorrow, an unbidden guest, sat at 
many hearthstones when, on May loth, i860, Theo- 
dore Parker died. Stricken with consumption, he 
had gone to Europe in search of health, and reaching 
Florence, expired within sight of the cathedral 
whose doors Michel Angelo said were fit to be the 
gates to paradise. Mr. Phillips went heavy-hearted 
and sober-faced for many a day. That home in the 
rear of his own residence would be broken up — was 
broken up. That light in the study over there was 
quenched at last, like the brighter light of intellect 
and goodness that had kindled and outshone it. 

In their grief, the congregation of Theodore 
Parker turned to Mr. Phillips. The}^ were not in 
theological sympathy, but they were in personal and 
moral accord ; and through the fall and winter of 
1860-61 the orator frequently occupied their plat- 
form, delivering from it several of his most cele- 
brated orations, and having on it some of his most 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 3OI 

thrilling experiences — as we shall see. The society 
of Mr. Parker Avorshipped in the Music Hall. A 
tender commemorative service was held there when 
the sad news came from Italy, at which Mr. Phillips 
spoke with great sweetness and beauty. 

On November i8th, he pronounced before the same 
society a notable discourse on ** The Pulpit." The 
utterance is interesting and important, because it 
gives his conception of its functions and scope. At 
the outset, Phillips expressed his appreciation of the 
essential idea of the Church, viz., the stated expres- 
sion of devotional feeling. Then he urged the p<ulpit 
to recognize its duty and preach to life. He believed 
the Gospel should be applied to daily affairs. He 
criticised the silence of the ministry on living ques- 
tions, and declared this fatal to the permanent influ- 
ence and usefulness of the sacred office. The func- 
tion of the pulpit, he said, was to awake and instruct 
the moral nature. He then proceeded : 

" Politics takes the vassal and lifts him into a voter. The 
press informs him concerning the happenings of the day. The 
school gives him elementary instruction. We need in addition 
a pulpit — moral initiative. lvalue the Sunday for this : it gives 
opportunity for such instruction. The devil invented w^ork — 
forced it. When we clutched a day and gave it to the soul, we 
redeemed one seventh of the time from the devil and gave it to 
God. The pulpit should use the day and opportunity for the 
training of the community in the whole encyclopaedia of morals 
— social questions, sanitary matters, slavery, temperance, labor, 
the condition of women, the nature of the Government, responsi- 
bility to law, the right of a majority, and how far a minority 
may yield, marriage, health, — the entire list. For all these are 
moral questions and they are living questions, not metaphysics, 
not dogmas. Hindostan settled these thousands of years ago. 
Christianity did not bury itself in the pit of Oriental metaphysics ; 
neither did it shroud itself in the hermitage of Italian doctnne. 



302 WENDELL PIlILLirS. 

The pulpit, as seen in the North of Europe and in this country. 
is not built up of mahogany and paint. It is the life of earnest 
men, the example of the community ; a forum to unfold, broaden, 
and help mankind. That is the pulpit. If this were recognized 
and acted upon, people would not desert the Church, as they 
tend to do ; or go, if at all, from a mere sense of duty ; but 
would be drawn to the pulpit as they are to the press and the 
theatre, by a felt want." ' 

The Spirit of discord rent the Democratic party 
in twain on the eve of the election, in i860 ; one fac- 
tion insisting upon a committal of the party to the 
doctrine of the equal right of slave property to enter 
all the Territories, while the other held out for a ref- 
erence of the whole question to the Supreme Couit 
— which had just decided it affirmatively in the Dred 
Scott case ! The result was the nomination of 
Stephen A. Douglas by the Northern, and of John 
C. Breckenridge by the Southern, Democrats. This 
insured the election of the Republican candidate. 
The truth is that the slave-holders had matured and 
were now ready to precipitate secession. They de- 
liberately engineered the disruption of the Dem.o- 
cratic party in order to secure Republican success 
and thus gain a pretext for disunion. But this was 
God's way of providing a plentiful contingent of war 
Democrats presently, when they should be needed. 

The spirit of wisdom guided the Republican Con- 
vention to the choice of Abraham Lincoln as Presi- 
dent, instead of William H. Seward, whom everv 
one expected to win the nomination. This was 
God's Why of providing the man for the hour. 

The spirit of fun called into being a " Union" 
party, which served to introduce an element of hu- 



1 /7flV " The Pulpit," a pamphlet in the Boston Public Library 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 303 

mor into the canvass, keeping the country in good 
temper before it went quite mad. This was God's 
way of easing up the nation before subjecting it to 
the impending strain. 

Mr. Lincoln was elected. In the evening of the 
day after the election, while the streets were noisy 
with paraders, Mr. Phillips lectured in Boston. 

" For the first time in our history," said he, " the slave has 
elected a President. In 1760 what rebels felt, James Otis spoke, 
George Washington achieved, and Everett praises to-day. 
The same routine will go on. What fanatics now feel. Garrison 
prints, Lincoln will achieve, and, at the safe distance of half a 
century, some courtly Everett will embalm in matchless pane- 
gyrics. You see exactly what my hopes rest upon. Growth ! 
The Republican party have undertaken a problem the solution 
of which will force them to our position." ' 

Mingling with the spirits mentioned, yet solitary, 
was another, hot from below and sulphureous, — the 
mob spirit now abroad, and never fiercer. The 
Abolitionists were its special victims, and Boston, as 
being their headquarters, its prominent theatre. On 
December 2d, i860, a meeting was announced in the 
Tremont Temple to discuss the abolition of slavery. 
It was the anniversary of John Brown's execution. 
The mayor turned mobocrat and thrust the discus- 
sionists out of doors. The Belknap Street colored 
church was their asylum ; a roof that deserves to 
be held in honor by every lover of free speech ; for 
here lips were ungagged when they were padlocked 
elsewhere for thirty years. ^ 

" Mr. Phillips," writes a participant, " spoke that night with 
regal magnificence and dauntless courage ; while the court-way 
beside the church, and the street in front, were filled with angry 



1 " 



Speeches and Lectures," pp. 294, 314. ^ An^f, p. ^o. 



304 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

and yelling rioters. They thought Phillips could not emerge 
without passing through their ranks, and they were prepared 
for violence toward him. But there was a rear passage-way, 
very narrow, from the meeting-house through to South Russell 
Street ; and out by that avenue, single file, walked Phillips and 
his friends, and thence up the hill to Myrtle, and so to Joy, Street, 
and across the Common to Mr. Phillips's Essex Street residence. 
When the mob heard that Mr. Phillips had escaped, they rushed 
up the hill, and overtook his escort just as it had descended the 
stone steps leading to the Beacon Street mall. They found a 
cordon of young men, forty or more in number, who. with locked 
arms and closely compacted bodies, had Phillips in the centre 
of their circle, and were safely bearing him home. Timidity, 
or a conviction that an assault would be fruitless, prompted 
them to take satisfaction at the discovery only in yells and ex- 
ecration." * 

Two weeks later Theodore Parker's church in- 
vited the orator to fill their pulpit. The Pro-Slavery 
sentiment of the city registered an oath that he 
should not speak. He concluded that he would. 
And he selected for his theme the men who had at- 
tempted to muzzle free speech on December 2d : 

" That morning," says one of the officers of the church, " saw 
a crowd within its walls never exceeded since. Mr. Phillips 
was on hand in due course, calm as nature on a spring morning. 
Whoever heard that discourse never will forget it. It was, from 
beginning to end, one terrible arraignment of the mob-spirit in 
America. He used no rose-water flavor in describing the rioters 
of the Tremont Temple gathering, but in the most scathing lan- 
guage made personal issue with the well-known social and polit- 
ical leaders on that occasion. As he poured out his blistering 
anathemas, I sat trembling lest I should hear the snap of a pistol 
that should send a ball into his glowing and pulsating form. 
But there was no violence attempted. His sympathizers fully 
equalled the malecontents ; and the mayor, on the appeal of the 
directors of the hall, had the audience interspersed with police- 



^ " Reminiscences of Charles W. Slack." 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 305 

men in plain clothes. When the services were over, and Mr. 
Phillips withdrew from the hall by the Winter Street entrance, 
court and street were found to be filled by the baffled rioters 
ready for assault. Just then two sections of young men, double 
file, took Mr. Phillips, with a friend on each side of him, be- 
tween them, and escorted him up Washington Street to his resi- 
dence in entire safety. This escort was fully armed, and it 
would have been a sad day for the mob had Mr. Phillips been 
assaulted. For nearly a week after, a portion of these young 
men remained on duty at Mr. Phillips's house for his protec- 
tion." ' 

In a letter to Miss Mary Grew Mr. Phillips thus 
refers to these experiences : 

" I hardly know what to say to you about our mob. It was 
not the murderous mob of 1835. Still there were dangerous 
elements in it. The police think, and so do many friends, that 
I should not have got home, Sunday, alive, without the protec- 
tion of the police ; but though there were some fists doubled, 
and pistols seen, still there were twenty stanch men around me, 
armed ; and even without the police, I think, we should have 
made our own way. The Monday evening meeting, I regretted 
to hold where we were compelled to, as it left the colored people 
exposed all night to the remains of the mob. But we are all 
safe, and I suppose nothing more will trouble us till our annual 
meeting in January. They boast, in State Street, that we shall 
not hold any Anti-Slavery meetings this winter. We'll see. 

"You know the owners of Music Hall refused us the hall. 
The Fraternity offered bonds for $50,000 ; then the trustees said 
they would consent if another speaker could be substituted. 
Had our mayor been here we should not have got the hall. But 
Heaven took him to Washington. So Mr. Clapp was acting 
mayor. He behaved nobly and secured, probably, the casting 
vote which, at half-past eleven p.m., obtained for us the hall. 

" The Brothers Hallowell are on hand on all occasions. The 
eldest had my right arm as we came home from the Music 
Hall ; his brother in front of me. The pleasantest item is, the 



* •* Reminiscences of Charles W. Slack.'* 



306 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

German Turners held a meeting Sunday evening, and voted 
' to protect free speech and free speakers ;' and a squad of them 
has watched our house every night since, though I never heard 
of it till days after. That's worth being mobbed lor. There's 
some good in the world, spite of original sin." * 

On the day previous to the scene in Music Hall, 
South Carolina seceded. The other Gulf States 
soon followed — seven in all. The Border States 
lingered. Then the North went on its knees ; of- 
fered the South carte blanche ; would she only deign 
to name her terms and remain in the Union ? Lib- 
erty bills were rescinded. Congress passed an 
amendment to the Constitution by the requisite two- 
thirds majority, forbidding the abolition of slavery 
and any interference with the return of " persons 
held to labor." A " Peace Congress" assembled in 
Washington and outran the Congress that sat in the 
Capitol in the race of subserviency — " anything, 
everything, only stay !" The Gulf States had gone. 
They looked on with amused disdain. The Border 
States still hesitated. 

Mr. Phillips spent these three weeks trying to per- 
suade the North to rise from its knees and let the 
South go. He thought, rightly, that the attitude 
of the free States was the most shameful in the long 
history of servility. He welcomed peaceable dis- 
union, and said the North could afford to pay mill- 
ions to be rid of such neighbors. On January 20th, 
1 861, he was announced to occupy Theodore Parker's 
pulpit again and his subject was published — " Dis- 
union !" On the 19th inst. Garrison penned these 
lines to Oliver Johnson, in New York City ; 



* Letter to Miss Grew (ms.). 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 307 

" It will be a fortnight, to-morrow, since I iiave been out-of- 
doors. It is on this account I have not replied to your letter 
giving me an extract of a plot in embryo for a murderous assault 
upon our dear and noble friend, Wendell Phillips. I thought it 
best, on the whole, to say nothing to him about it ; but that his 
precious life is in very great danger, in consequence of the 
malignity felt and expressed against him in this city since the 
John Brown meeting, there is no doubt among us. Hence, we 
are quite sure of a mobocratic outbreak at our annual meeting 
on Thursday and Friday next ; and, though some of us may be 
exposed to personal violence, Phillips will doubtless be the object 
of special vengeance. The new mayor, Wightman, is bitterly 
opposed to us, refuses to give us any protection, and says if 
there is any disturbance he will arrest our speakers, together 
with the trustees of Tremont Temple ! What a villain ! I 
should not wonder if blood should be shed on the occasion, for 
there will be a resolute body of men present, determined to main- 
tain liberty of speech. Whether an attempt will be made to 
break up the Anti-Slavery Festival at Music Hall, on Wednes- 
day evening, remains to be seen. But all will work well in the 
end. 

" Phillips is to speak at the Music Hall to-morrow forenoon, 
before Mr. Parker's congregation, and another violent demon- 
stration is anticipated. Mayor Wightman refuses to order the 
police to be present to preserve order. This makes the per- 
sonal peril of Phillips greater than it was before." ^ 

Mr. Phillips spoke, and never more calmly, never 
more powerfully. The mob, as before, occupied the 
hall, and the approaches to it.^ And, as before, he 
was escorted to his home by a self-appointed body- 
guard.' 

On the 24th inst., the annual meeting of the Mas- 
sachusetts Anti-Slavery Society (referred to as im- 
pending by Mr. Garrison in his letter to Mr. John- 



* " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. iv., p. 3. 

' ** Speeches and Lectures," by Wendell Phillips, p. 343. ' lb. 



308 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

son) was held. At least one session was held. Of 
this Mrs. Lydia Maria Child has left a graphic pen- 
and-ink sketch. Addressing a friend, she writes : 

" I would rather have given fifty dollars than attend the meet- 
ing, but conscience told me it was a duty, I was excited and 
anxious, not for myself, but for Wendell Phillips. Hour after 
hour of the night I heard the clock strike, while visions were 
passing through my mind of that noble head assailed by mur- 
derous hands, and I obliged to stand by without the power to 
save him. 

" I went very early in the morning, and entered the Tremont 
Temple by a private labyrinthine passage. There I found a 
company of young men, a portion of the self-constituted body- 
guard of Mr. Phillips. They looked calm, but resolute and 
stern. I knew they were all armed, as well as hundreds of 
others ; but their weapons were not visible. The women friends 
came in gradually by the same private passage. It was a sol- 
emn gathering, I assure you ; for though there was a pledge 
not to use weapons unless Mr. Phillips or some other Anti- 
Slavery speaker was personally in danger, still nobody could 
foresee what might happen. The meeting opened well. The 
Anti-Slavery sentiment was there in strong force, but soon the 
mob began to yell from the galleries. They came tumbling in 
by hundreds. The papers will tell you of their goings-on. Such 
yelling, screeching, stamping, and bellowing I never heard. It 
was a full realization of the old phrase, ' All hell broke loose.' 

" Mr. Phillips stood on the front of the platform for a full 
hour, trying to be heard whenever the storm lulled a little. 
They cried, ' Throw him out ! ' ' Throw a brickbat at him ! ' 
' Your house is afire ; don't you know your house is afire ? 
Go put out your house.' Then they'd sing, with various bellow- 
ing and shrieking accompaniments, ' Tell John Andrew, tell 
John Andrew, John Brown's dead ! ' I should think there were 
four or five hundred of them. At one time they all rose up, 
many of them clattered down-stairs, and there was a surging 
forward toward the platform. My heart beat so fast I could 
hear it ; fori did not then know how Mr. Phillips's armed friends 
were stationed at every door, and in the middle of every aisle. 
They formed a firm wall, which the mob could not pass. At 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 3O9 

last it was announced that the police were coming. I saw and 
heard nothing of them, but there was a lull. Mr. Phillips tried 
to speak, but his voice was again drowned. Then, by a clever 
stroke of management, he stooped forward, and addressed his 
speech to the reporters stationed directly below him. This tan- 
talized the mob ; and they began to call out, ' Speak louder ! 
We want to hear what you're saying ;' whereupon he raised his 
voice, and for half an hour he seemed to hold them in the hol- 
low of his hand. But as soon as he sat down, they began to yell 
and sing again, to prevent any more speaking." ^ 

In the afternoon the mayor once more interfered, 
and by his command the hall was not opened at 
night. '^ 

Was Mr. Phillips silenced ? Oh, no ! On Feb- 
ruary 17th, he re-entered Parker's pulpit and spoke 
on " Progress," still serenely, still uncompromis- 
ingly, still with the mob for an audience, and a pha- 
lanx of armed friends for a rampart. While he was 
speaking a string of fifty or more rioters pushed into 
the hall and surged toward the desk. They were 
soon stayed by the protecting cordon in front of the 
orator. Here they stood and listened, and listening 
were touched, so that at last they broke with the 
rest of the audience into wild applause ! Phillips 
was always proud of this proof of his persuasive 
powers — rioters transformed into sympathizers ! 



^ " Letters of Lydia Maria Child," pp. 147, 149. 

^ Vide Liberator, vol. xxxi., p, 17. What Mr. Phillips said to the re- 
porters was : " While I speak to these pencils, I speak to a million of 
men. What, then, are those boys ? We have got the press of the 
country in our hands. Whether they like us or not, they know that 
our speeches sell their papers. With five newspapers we may defy 
five hundred boys, . . . My voice is beaten by theirs, but they can- 
not beat types. All hail and glory to Faust, who invented printing, 
for he made mobs impossible J'' lb. 



310 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

His family physician and firm ally, Dr. David Thayer, 
who was present, relates that as the band entered, 
one of them addressed a bystander, supposing him 
to be a malcontent, and pulling- a noosed rope half 
out of his overcoat pocket, said in a whisper, " See ! 
we are going to snake him out and hang him with 
this on the Common." The person addressed drew 
out a revolver, pushed it into the eyes of the ruffian, 
and cried : " God d — n you, if you don't get out of 
this hall, I'll blow your brains out !" He got out in 
a hurry. He had mistaken his man. Dr. Thayer 
said he thought it justifiable profanity.' When the 
address was ended, the brave doctor spirited Mr. 
Phillips into his waiting buggy, and drove him home 
at a two-forty pace — the city ordinance to the con- 
trary, notwithstanding. For da^^s, that house was 
an arsenal. Friends encamped within, well armed. 
The police stood without, while the mob transformed 
the vicinity into a pandemonium. 

" If those fellows had broken in, would you have 
shot them, Mr. Phillips ?" asked a lady friend. 

" Yes," was the quiet answer, — " just as I would 
shoot a mad dog or a wild bull !" ' 

" During all this time," remarks Mr. T. W. Hig- 
ginson, an e3^e- witness, " there was something pecul- 
iarly striking and characteristic in his demeanor. 
There was absolutely nothing of bull-dog combative- 
ness ; but a careless, buoyant, almost patrician air, 
as if nothing in the way of mob-violence were worth 
considering, and all the threats of opponents were 
simply beneath contempt. He seemed like some 



' The writer had this from Dr. Thayer's own lips. 
' Told by Mrs. Eleanor F. Crosby 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 3II 

English Jacobite nobleman on the scaffold, carelessly 
taking snuff, and kissing his hand to the crowd, 
before laying his head upon the block." 

So passed, for Mr. Phillips, the winter of seces- 
sion. He ran a gauntlet of mobs three months long 
— unhurt. This was God's way of vindicating free 
speech by the freest speaker in the world. 



XXIV. 

UNDER THE FLAG. 

During the months whose history has just been 
traced as it was locahzed in the experience of Mr. 
PhilHps, the country was vexed and tormented, rent 
and crazed, hke the demoniac in the Scriptures, by 
devils. The Gulf States gone ; the Border States 
still balancing ; party feehng so belligerent that men 
and women of opposite politics talked bullets when 
they met ; the press voicing and increasing the prev- 
alent perplexity and animosity ; business demoral- 
ized ; a horrible uncertainty, more appalling than 
the most dreadful assurance, populating the conti- 
nent with rumors, — but how describe the indescrib- 
able ? 

Out of this chaos certain facts stalked into the con- 
sciousness of the North. It was known that the dis- 
graceful administration of James Buchanan was 
about to end. It was the avowed intention of the 
lingering Catilines of secession to effect a coup d'etat 
and take possession of the Capital. It was openly 
asserted that Abraham Lincoln should never be in- 
augurated. The South was united. The North — 
it was Ishmael multiplied into twenty million. 

Time passed. The confusion deepened. The 

President-elect stole disguised into Washington. 

Buchanan left the White House. Lincoln entered 

t and assumed the government. General Winfield 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 3 1 3 

Scott, faithful among the faithless, held the Capital 
in the name of the nation. The new Executive de- 
livered his inaugural — conciliatory in tone, yet self- 
possessed and courageous ; offering to enforce the 
Fugitive Slave Law, and recommending the States 
to ratify the Constitutional amendment just passed 
by Congress, making the abolition of slavery impos- 
sible ; but affirming the purpose to uphold and vin- 
dicate the supreme authority of the nation. 

This was the South's opportunity. God inter- 
vened and made the slave-holders deaf. He meant 
to destroy the monster iniquity. The secessionists 
were convinced that the North would not fight — that 
it could not. For was it not hopelessly divided ? 
Did not Jefferson Davis have in his pocket a letter 
from ex- President Franklin Pierce, in which the re- 
creant New Englander declared that if there should 
be war the fighting would not be in the South but 
in the North ? ' Was there not every reason to be- 
lieve that the Pro-Slavery sympathizers here would 
find occupation for Mr. Lincoln at home, should he 
move toward coercion ? Moreover, the treasury — 
had not that been emptied by the pilferers who held 
office for this purpose under the late Administration ? 
The navy — was not that artfully scattered in distant 
seas ? The army — was not that reduced to a cor- 
poral's guard ? Had not the arsenals been despoiled 
of arms, which the Confederates now handled } 
What could the President do, if he would 7 Why, 
he had been robbed of all means precisely with a 
view to this emergency. 

The secessionists laughed at Lincoln's overtures. 



* Greeley's " American Conflict," vol, i., p. 513. 



314 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Suppose they returned, how could legislation mu2. 
zle Northern sentiment ? Had they not tried that 
for fifty years ? It was the type of society in the 
North that they dreaded. It was from this that they 
wished to separate themselves. One thing, how- 
ever, gave them anxiety. They desired the adher- 
ence of the Border States to the Confederacy. To 
secure this they decided to " fire the Southern 
heart" — never imagining the shot which did that 
would also fire the heart of the North. This was 
their supreme, but natural, blunder. Had the fiag 
been left unassailed there would have been a peace- 
able dissolution of the Union. God again interfered. 
. On x\pril 1 2th, 1861, Fort Sumter was bombarded ! 

The result was unimaginable. It did, indeed, have 
the expected effect in the Border States, most of 
which made haste to secede. 

But at the North, instead of being a signal for a Pro- 
Slavery insurrection, it stirred a protest of indignant 
patriotism from the very graveyards. There was 
" such an uprising in every city, town, and hamlet, 
without distinction of sect or party, as to seem," 
wrote Mr. Garrison, " like a general resurrection of 
the dead." ^ In the first fierce moment of arousal, 
* all talk of compromise ceased. The empty exchequer 
was filled by a national loan. A navy was extem- 
porized, as if by magic. Canada and Europe were 
ransacked for arms. And in response to the Presi- 
dent's call for volunteers to suppress the rebellion, 
every farm, every workshop, every counting-room, 
every fireside transformed citizens into soldiers and 
made Washington a camp. 



* Vide Liberator^ vol. xxxi„ p 66. 



Wendell phillips. 315 

In a moment the whole situation changed. With 
corresponding rapidity, the attitude of individuals 
altered. Senator Douglas ceased to be a dough-face 
and became a patriot. Benjamin F. Butler, up to 
this moment a Northern man with Southern prin- 
ciples, experienced a change of heart and was born 
again. Garrison " remembered to forget" that he 
was a non-resistant and made the Liberator oyqy from 
a Quaker gun into a columbiad. 

Mr. Phillips veered with the rest. He had been a 
Disunionist for freedom's sake since 1843. AH 
winter he had been advising the North to let the 
South go in peace. Now he, too, favored war and 
wished to save the Union. Was he not inconsis- 
tent ? No, he changed, not his principles, but his 
methods. He had been aimmg at — what } The 
emancipation of the negro race and the liberation of 
the North from slave-holding domination. He now 
saw, with intuitive quickness, that the war for the 
Union was the Providential way of attaining both 
objects. As slavery lay at the bottom of the differ- 
ence between the sections, it was clear that slavery 
must be abolished in order to final union. Two 
ideas, therefore, took possession of him now and 
shaped his course, viz., free the blacks as a war 
measure, and then enfranchise them. This policy 
he urged throughout the war and throughout the 
period of reconstruction, and finally harvested it in 
the Proclamation of Emancipation and in the three 
amendments to the Constitution. To those who 
criticised his present position and accused him ol 
inconsistency his triumphant reply was : 

" People may say this is strange language for me, — a Dis- 
unionist. Well, I was a Disunionist, sincerely, for twenty years. 



3l6 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

I did hate the Union, when union meant lies in the pulpit and 
mobs in the streets, when union meant making white men hypo- 
crites and black men slaves. {Cheers ) I did prefer purity to 
peace, — I acknowledge it. The child of six generations of Puri- 
tans, knowing well the value of union, I did prefer disunion to 
being the accomplice of tyrants. But now — when I see what the 
Union must mean in order to last, when 1 see that you cannot 
have union without meaning justice, and when I see twenty mill- 
ions of people, with a current as swift and as inevitable as 
Niagara, determined that this Union shall mean justice, why 
should I object to it ? I endeavored honestly, and am not 
ashamed of it, to take nineteen States out of this Union, and con- 
secrate them to liberty, and twenty millions of people answer 
me back, ' We like your motto, only we mean to keep thirty- 
four States under it.' Do you suppose that I am not Yankee 
enough to buy union when I can have it at a fair price ?" ' 

Learning- of Mr. Phillips's change of views, and 
on fire themselves with the enthusiasm of the hour, 
Theodore Parker's society invited the orator to 
occupy their desk on Sunday, April 21st, nine days 
after the firing of " the shot heard round the world." 

" They dressed their pulpit," remarks one of their number, 
" in the national colors. Over the occupant's head was an arch 
of bunting, decked with laurel and evergreen. Thousands 
crowded into the hall. Mr. Phillips was promptly on hand, with 
— for the first time in his public career — an audience wholly in 
sympathy with his expected speech. The atmosphere was 
charged with patriotism. Men's faces, especially those of the 
old Abolitionists, were aglow with a confident hope. Again was 
Mr. Phillips equal to the occasion ! He welcomed the national 
outbreak as the sure precursor of the death of human slavery in 
republican America. He built up his magnificent expectancy 
of the results of the war, sentence by sentence, thrilling the 
audience with grand and noble aspiration. He yielded, in the 
furnace of his patriotic and humane warmth, all his old-time pre- 
dilections, and stood, disinthralled, for the Union and the flag, 



' Vide " Speeches and Lectures," p. 440. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 317 

the Constitution of the fathers, and its future interpretation in 
the interest of liberty on this continent. How the audience 
applauded ! How they cheered ! The men who were there to 
mob him three months before, now were his strongest indorsers. 
They crowded the platform to congratulate him when he closed, 
and joy and satisfaction beamed on every countenance. It had 
been a Pentecostal season ; and the divine outflow of humanity, 
justice, and the rights of man, had baptized every one of that 
immense throng ! It required no phalanx of armed men to es- 
cort Mr. Phillips home that day ; for he was almost, figuratively, 
borne in the arms of a grateful citizenship to his modest 
abode !" 1 

From this famous speech we extract a few sen- 
tences to indicate its trend : 

" All winter long, I have acted with that party which cried for 
peace. The Anti-Slavery enterprise to which I belong started 
with peace written on its banners. We imagined that the age 
of bullets was over ; that the age of ideas had come ; that thirty 
millions of people were able to take a great question, and decide 
it by the conflict of opinions ; that, without letting the ship of 
state founder, we could lift four millions of men into liberty and 
justice. We thought that if your statesmen would throw away 
personal ambition and party watchwords, and devote themselves 
to the great issue, this might be accomplished. To a certain 
extent it has been. The North has answered to the call. Year 
after year, event by event, had indicated the rising education of 
the people, — the readiness for a higher moral life, the calm, self- 
poised confidence in our own convictions that patiently waits — 
like the master for a pupil — for a neighbor's conversion. The 
North has responded to the call of that peaceful, moral, intellect- 
ual agitation which the Anti-Slavery idea has initiated. Our mis- 
take, if any, has been that we counted too much on the intelli- 
gence of the masses, on the honesty and wisdom of statesmen as 
a class. Perhaps we did not give weight enough to the fact we 
saw, that this nation is made up of different ages ; not homo- 
geneous, but a mixed mass of different centuries. The North 
thinks, — can appreciate argument, — is the nineteenth century, 

^ Reminiscences of Charles W. Slack, 



3l8 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

— hardly any struggle left in it but that between the working- 
class and the money-kings. The South dreams — it is the thir- 
teenth and fourteenth century,— baron and serf, — noble and slave. 
Jack Cade and Wat Tyler loom over its horizon, and the serf, 
rising, calls for another Thierry to record his struggle. There 
the fagot still burns which the doctors of the Sorbonne called, 
ages ago, ' the best light to guide the erring.* There men are 
tortured for opinions, the only punishment the Jesuits were will- 
ing their pupils should look on. This is, perhaps, too flattering 
a picture of the South. Better call her, as Sumner does, ' the 
Barbarous States.' Our struggle, therefore, is between barbar- 
ism and civilization. Such can only be settled by arms. {Pro- 
lo7iged cheering.) The Government has waited until its best 
friends almost suspected its courage or its integrity ; but the 
cannon shot against Fort Sumter has opened the only door out 
of this hour. There were but two. One was compromise ; the 
other was battle. The integrity of the North closed the first ; 
the generous forbearance of nineteen States closed the other. 
The South opened this vv^iih cannon-shot, and Lincoln shows 
himself at the door. [Prolonged and enthusiastic cheering.) 
The war, then, is not aggressive, but in self-defence, and Wash- 
ington has become the Thermopylae of liberty and justice. {^Ap- 
plause.') Rather than surrender that Capital, cover every 
square foot of it with a living body {loud cheers) ; crowd it with 
a million of men, and empty every bank vault at the North to 
pay the cost. {Renewed cheering.) Teach the world once for 
all, that North America belongs to the Stars and Stripes, and 
under them no man shall wear a chain. {Eiithusiastlc cheer- 
ing.) In the whole of this conflict, I have looked only at liberty, 
— only at the slave. Perry entered the battle of the Lakes with 
' Don't give up the ship 1 ' floating from the masthead of the 
' Lawrence.' When with his lighting flag he left her crippled, 
heading north, and, mounting the deck of the Niagara, turned 
her bows due west, he did all for one and the same purpose, — 
to rake the decks of his foe. Steer north or west, acknowledge 
secession or cannonade it, I care not which ; but ' proclaim lib- 
erty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.* " 
{Loud cheer s.y 



Speeches and Lectures," p. 398, 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 319 

In pursuance of his purpose to support the Admin- 
istration and educate public opinion, Mr. Phillips 
entered heart and soul into a personal canvass of the 
country and made himself ubiquitous during the re- 
mainder of 1 861. In December he visited New York 
and spoke to an audience that recalled the one in 
Music Hall on April 21st. His aim was to strike 
into the inmost conscience of the country the essen- 
tial nature of the strife, and the hopelessness of com- 
promise. Said he : 

" It is the aristocratic element which survived the Constitution, 
which our fathers thought could be safely left under it, and the 
South to-day is forced into this war by the natural growth of the 
antagonistic principle. You may pledge whatever submission 
and patience of Southern institutions you please, it is not enough. 
South Carolina said to Massachusetts, in 1833, when Edward 
Everett was Governor, ' Abolish free speech, — it is a nuisance.' 
She is right, — from her standpoint it is. {Laughter.) That is, 
it is not possible to preserve the quiet of South Carolina con- 
sistently with free speech ; but you know the story Sir Walter 
Scott told of the Scotch laird, who said to his old butler, ' Jock, 
you and I can't live under this roof.' ' And where does your 
honor think of going ? ' So free speech says to South Carolina 
to-day. Now I say you may pledge, compromise, guarantee 
what you please. The South well knows that is not your pur- 
pose, — it is your character she dreads. It is the nature of North- 
ern institutions, the perilous freedom of discussion, the flavor of 
our ideas, the sight of our growth, the very neighborhood of 
such States, that constitutes the danger. It is like two vases 
launched on the stormy sea. The iron said to the crockery, ' I 
won't come near you.' * Thank you,' said the weaker vessel; 
' there is just as much danger in my coming near you.* This 
the South feels ; hence her determination ; hence, indeed, the im- 
perious necessity that she should rule and shape our Government, 
or of sailing out of it. 

" And the struggle is between these two ideas. Our fathers, 
as I said, thought they could safely be left, one to outgrow the 
other. They took gunpowder and a lighted match, forced them 



320 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

into a stalwart cannon, screwed down the muzzle, and thought 
they could secure peace. But it has resulted, differently ; their 
cannon has exploded, and we stand among the fragments. 

" Now some Republicans and some Democrats — not Butler 
and Bryant and Cochrane and Cameron, not Boutwell and Ban- 
croft and Dickinson, and others — but the old set — the old set 
say to the Republicans, * Lay the pieces carefully together in 
their places ; put the gunpowder and the match in again, say the 
Constitution backward instead of your prayers, and there will 
never be another rebellion ! ' I doubt it. It seems to me that 
like causes will produce like effects." ^ 

In a letter which Mr. Garrison wrote to Oliver 
Johnson, the editor of the Anti-Slavery Standard, in 
New York City, there is an interesting reference to 
this speech, and an amusing- account of Mr. Phillips's 
habits of revision : 

" You will see in the Liberator, this week, the speech of Mr. 
Phillips, delivered in New York, as revised and corrected by 
himself. And such revision, correction, alteration, and addi- 
tion you never saw, in the way of emendation ! More than two 
columns of the Tribune s report were in type before Phillips 
came into our office ; and the manipulation these required was 
a caution to all reporters and type-setters ! I proposed to Phil- 
lips to send his altered ' slips ' to Barnum as a remarkable curi- 
osity, and Winchell suggested having them photographed ! But 
Phillips desired to make his speech as complete and full as he 
could, and I am glad that you are to receive it without being put 
to any trouble about it. Doubtless, you will be requested to 
make some new alterations ; for he is constantly criticising what 
he has spoken, and pays no regard to literal accuracy. This 
speech will be eagerly read, as it touches ably upon many inter- 
esting points." "^ 

Mr. Phillips*s mind was critical. His taste was 
exquisite. He never cared to see his speeches in 



' " Speeches and Lectures," pp. 426, 428. 

' puoted in ** William Lloyd Garrison," vol. iv., p. 39. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 32 1 

print. But if they were printed he wished them 
to appear in proper shape. Hence his painstaking 
revision. Nor did the amended copy ever quite 
satisfy him. Probably, like the after-dinner speaker 
who made a poor speech and then went home, lay 
awake all night and thought what a splendid speech 
he might have made, — he was perplexed by the very 
wealth of his resources. He never made a poor' 
speech ; but his temperament made him exacting 
and fastidious. 

Simultaneously with the efforts above referred to, 
the Agitator now delivered far and wide his marvel- 
lous lecture on " Toussaint L'Ouverture," the negro 
creator of Hayti. The doubt in these days touched 
the capacity of the blacks, — their courage, their sus- 
ceptibility to improvement, their humanity. With 
the San Domingo insurrection for an illustration, 
Mr. Phillips showed " that the negro blood, instead 
of standing at the bottom of the list, is entitled, if 
judged either by its great men or its masses, — by its 
courage, its purpose, or endurance, to a place as 
near the Anglo-Saxon as any other blood known in 
history."' He had a genius for this kind of por- 
traiture ; and he made Toussaint as familiar to the 
American Lyceum. as John Brown or Washington. 
Thus he rendered to the nation an immense service, 
immediate and remote ; immediate, because public 
opinion was thus fashioned to tolerate and soon to 
demand the arming of the blacks for the defence of 
the Union ; remote, because prejudice was dispelled, 
a race was rehabilitated in its own respect and in the 
respect of others, and it was thus made easier for 

' Vide " Speeches and Lectures," pp. 463-94, 



322 WENDELT> PHILLIPS. 

whites and blacks to get on together in the new re- 
lations of freedom. 

Considering the purpose for \vhich it was pre- 
pared and the limitations incidental to the Lyceum, 
it is not too much to claim that the lecture on 
Toussaint stands at the head of this department of 
literature. Its delivery was an enchantment. With- 
out this, however, the critic feels the subtle charm, 
and admires the wealth of historical reference, the 
keen analysis, the effective anecdote, the spicy sa- 
tire, the nice portrayal of character, the epigramma- 
tic point, the varied splendor of diction. But to 
those who can only read it, we may say, as ^schines 
did to his applauding scholars at Rhodes, when he 
had recited the oration of Demosthenes that resulted 
in his banishment : " You admire now : how would 
vour admiration have been raised could you have 
heard him speak it ?" 



XXV. 

THE STRUGGLE OF TWO CIVILIZATIONS. 

War, like peace, requires adjustment. It cannot 
be waged successfully without accumulated material 
and practical skill. In the appeal to arms the South 
had every advantage of long preparation, the choice 
of time, military habits, and initiative. The North 
was unready, was without the martial spirit, and 
lacked dexterity. For fifty years, the South had 
been a camp, and the North had been a workshop. 
Hence, at the start, secession won victories and the 
Union learned by defeat. 

Providence again ! For had the Rebellion been 
quelled within a year or two, slavery would have 
survived. Scrange to say, there was no general 
recognition of the fact in the free States that the 
death-grapple was between hostile systems. The 
very coiner of the phrase, " irrepressible conflict" 
was now in the Cabinet, exerting himself to patch 
up a peace on the impossible basis of the status quo 
ante belliun. And the author of the expression, ** A 
house divided against itself cannot stand," was now 
in the White House making every effort to restore 
the Union with slavery intact. Under such tutelage, 
the word compromise, buried beneath the passionate 
resentment of the nation when the flag was insulted, 
was dug up and revived in the community. Thus, 
President Lincoln assured Horace Greeley that his 



324 WENDELL nilLLirS. 

intention was to save the Union without reference 
to slavery — which was as though a physician should 
say : " I mean to cure my patient without reference 
to the disease." 

However much others, in and out of office, might 
doubt and hesitate, the Abolitionists did not. Mr. 
Phillips as their mouthpiece never tired of emphasiz- 
ing the opportunity and the necessity of Abolition, 
and the means, in the war power of the Government. 
In furtherance of this object, he co-operated with a 
large number of prominent gentlemen of Massa- 
chusetts in the organization of an Emancipation 
League. Recognizing that slavery was the " origin 
and mainspring of the Rebellion," the leaguers 
pledged themselves to make and direct sentiment in 
that channel. On March loth Mr. Phillips addressed 
his colleagues. The President had just taken his 
first Anti-Slavery step — trembling and uncertain as 
an infant's first step away from the mother's lap. 
It was a proposition to compensate the Border 
States for the gradual emancipation of their slaves 
— a proposition which the Border States promptly 
rejected. Mr. Phillips welcomed it as a sign of 
promise. " If the President has not entered Canaan, 
he has turned his face Zionward," he assured his 
associates ; and he interpreted the message as say- 
ing : " Gentlemen of the Border States, now is your 
time. If you want your money, take it, or if here- 
after I should free 3'our slaves without pa3nng for 
them, don't say I did not offer to do it." ' But God 
hardened Pharaoh's heart. He intended not gradual 
but immediate emancipation. 



' Vic(e Liberator, vol. xxxii., p. 42. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 325 

In March, 1862, the orator went to Washington — 
his first visit. His reception was cordial. The os- 
tensible object of his presence was the delivery of 
two lectures there, one literary, the other political. 
He spoke on successive evenings, to immense audi- 
ences which embraced the official life of the city. 
The curiosity to hear him was great, and he fully 
met all expectations. He brought himself on the 
platform. It was Wendell Phillips in his most inci- 
sive mood. In both Houses of Congress he was the 
recipient of marked attention. He also had an in- 
terview with Lincoln. " I told him," said he, ** that 
if he started the experiment of emancipation, and 
honestly devoted his energies to making it a fact, he 
would deserve to hold the helm until the experiment 
was finished — that the people would not allow him 
to quit while it was trying." ' At the same time he 
urged Lincoln to dismiss Seward from the Cabinet 
as a hopeless obstructive, but in vain.'^ 

From the Capital, the lecturer went Westward, 
speaking here and there en route, always to crowds, 
and usually nowadays to sympathizers. Cincinnati, 
however, proved to be a disagreeable exception. 
Here a gang of murderous rioters, getting their in- 
spiration, and perhaps their recruits, from the ad- 
jacent Kentucky, poured into the Opera House and 
fusilladed the '* d — d Abolitionist" with various mis- 
siles, odorous and odious, as he stood in full expo- 
sure on the stage. Once he was struck ; without 
noticing it, he proceeded, bland but satiric, every 
sentence a stab, and extorted the admiration of the 



* Vide Liberator, vol. xxxiii., p. IIO. 

* lb., pp. 19, 26. 



326 WENDETJ, I'HILLIPS;. 

very assailants by his fearless bearinj^.' " I really 
imagined I was back in Boston," commented the 
orator, with a laugh. " The Cincinnati Opera 
House suggested Tremont Temple, and the rats of 
the West closely resembled those of the East. These 
and those alike nibble and gnaw — and run.'' ' 

Mr. Phillips made himself more and more a whip 
and spur. He became censor-general. In season 
and out of season, he urged Congress, the Cabinet, 
the President to forge and hurl the only thunderbolt 
that could save the Union, or make it worth saving. 
From this standpoint, he criticised men and meas- 
ures unsparingly. He loomed like the embodied 
spirit of justice. Mr. Lincoln w*as riding two hob- 
bies — that of compensated emancipation in the Bor- 
der States, secessionist at heart though in the Union 
by force and as wedded to slavery as the Carolinas ; 
and that of colonization. The honest but ignorant 
rail-splitter was twenty years behind the times. We 
have heard Mr. Phillips's remarks regarding the first 
hobby. Touching the second, he said : 

" Colonize the blacks ! A man might as well colonize his 
hands ; or when the robber enters his house, he might as well 
colonize his revolver. . . . We need the blacks even more than 
they need us. They know every inlet, the pathway of ev^ery 
wood, the whole country is mapped at night in their instinct. 
And they are inevitably on our side, ready as well as skilled to 
aid : the only element the South has which belongs to the nine- 
teenth century. Aside from justice, the Union needs the 
blacks."" 



' Vide Liberator^ vol. xxxii., pp. 53, 54. 

■•* Letter to Rev. John T. Sargent, from Cincinnati, March 25th, 1863 

(MS.). 

' Yide ** Speeches and Lectures," pp. 545, 546. 



WENDELL rillLLIPS. 327 

He thought the hesitation of the Administration 
arose from its Whig- antecedents. Listen to him : 

" The Whig party, good as it was in many respects, virtuous 
in certain of its impulses, correct in some of its aspirations, had 
one defect : it had no confidence in the people, no trust in the 
masses ; it did not believe in the conscience and intelligence of 
the million ; it looked, indeed, upon the whole world as a pro- 
bate court, in which education and wealth were the guardians. 
And so when our rulers entered on their work of defending the 
nation, they dared not trust the country to the hearts that loved 
it."i 

With regard to the spirit of the great battle, he 
complimented the South upon its sincerity, and 
said : 

" No man can fight Stonewall Jackson, an honest fanatic on 
the side of slavery, but John Brown, an equally honest fanatic 
on the side of freedom. They are the only chemical equals, and 
will neutralize each other. You cannot neutralize nitric acid 
with cologne water. William H. Seward is no match for Jeffer- 
son Davis. We must have what they have — positive convictions. 
Otherwise the elements of the struggle are unequal." ' 

Concerning the problem itself, he said : 

" We have not only an army to conquer, but we have a state 
of mind to annihilate. . . . When England conquered the High- 
lands, she held them,— held them until she could educate them, 
— and it took a generation. That is just what we have to do 
with the South ; annihilate the old South, and put a new one 
there. You do not annihilate a thing by abolishing it. You 
must supply the vacancy." ' 

He states and answers a constant taunt as follows : 

** But men say, ' This is a mean thing ; nineteen millions of 
people pitched against eight millions of Southerners, white men, 
and can't whip them, and now begin to call on the negroes.' Is 



' Vide " Speeches and Lectures," p. 529. ' lb., p. 540. 

^ lb., p. 544. 



328 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

that the right statement ? Look at it. What is the South's 
strength ? She has eight millions of whites. She has the sym- 
pathy of foreign powers. She has the labor of four millions of 
slaves. What strength has the North ? Divided about equally 
— into Republicans and Democrats ; the Republicans willing to 
go but half way, and the Democrats not willing to go at all. 
{Laughter?) It is like two men fighting. We will call them 
Jonathan and Charles. Jonathan is the North. His right hand, 
the Democratic party, he holds behind him. His left hand, his 
own tenderness of conscience uses to keep the slaves down. 
That is how he is to fight. No, that is not all. Upon his 
shoulders is strapped the West Point Academy like a stone of a 
hundred-weight. {Laughter.^ The South stands with both 
hands, holding loaded revolvers, and, lest she should lose any 
time, John Bull is behind with additional pistols to hand the 
moment she needs them. These are the two powers which are 
fighting this battle." ' 

Some of these passages have been taken from a 
speech delivered by Mr. Phillips in New York dur- 
ing- the anniversary week of 1863. In a letter to his 
wife, Mr. Garrison paints certain incidents which 
concern the orator : 

" Phillips's meeting at the Institute, Monday evening, was a 
splendid one, and he acquitted himself in a way to gather fresh 
laurels for his brow. His speech was reported in full in the 
Tribune of Tuesday morning. At the conclusion of it, I was 
loudly called for, but held back. Then calls were made for 
Horace Greeley, who came forward and made a few remarks in 
his queer-toned voice and very awkward manner. The cries 
were renewed for m.e, and I said a few words, the applause 
being general and very marked. When I first entered the hall, 
and was conducted to a seat on the platform by the side of 
Mayor Opdyke, the audience broke out into repeated rounds of 
applause. What a change in popular sentiment and feeling 
from the old mobocratic, Pro-Slavery times ! And, remember, 



^ Vide " Speeches and Lectures," p. 553. 



WENDELL I'HILLIPS. 329 

this was a meeting called by the Sixteenth Republican Ward 
Association !" ' 

The utterances of Mr. Phillips in New York and 
elsewhere, expressed the feelings not only of the 
Abolitionists, but of a constantly-increasing- multi- 
tude of Northern men and women. At last, the 
Administration heard and heeded. In September, 
1862, President Lincoln issued his preliminary Proc- 
lamation of Emancipation — the proclamation of 
warning. It gave the rebellious States a hundred 
days of grace, and interjected the twin hobbies of 
Mr. Lincoln, — gradual and compensated emancipa- 
tion in the Border States, and colonization. " It is 
a step in the right direction," said Mr. Garrison. 
" A step !'* exclaimed Mr. Phillips, " it's a stride !" * 

On January ist, 1863, secession being unrespon- 
sive, came the second and final proclamation — the 
edict of freedom. The war power of the Union 
struck off the shackles of all slaves held in the re- 
volted States. The North hailed it as the beginning 
of the end. Great public meetings confirmed and 
glorified the event. 

As though God had been placated by this instal- 
ment of justice, success began from this hour to 
accompany the efforts of the nation. Grant at Vicks- 
burg, Meade at Gettysburg, soon afterward dealt 
staggering blows to the Confederacy. Abroad, too, 
the effect was wholesome. The English aristocracy 
had all along openly sympathized with and covertly 
aided their fellow aristocrats in America. They had 
made a dozen attempts to recognize the indepen- 
dence of the Confederacy. Their ships, as Southern 



^ " William Lloyd Garrison vrol. iv., p. 78. ^ 16., p. 62, note. 



330 WENDELL IMIILLIPS. 

privateers, had pirated upon our commerce, and 
driven it from the high seas. The American Anti- 
Slavery Society is entitled to praise, which it has 
never received, on account of its successful endeav- 
ors, through British agents, to enlighten England 
on American affairs. George Thompson, in the pay 
of this body, had been exerting himself from the 
outset in this good work and with the best results.' 
An influential " Emancipation Society" had been or- 
ganized in London in the interest of the Union, 
with Thompson as its animating spirit, and his son- 
in-law, F. W. Chesson, as its executive. Among its 
members were John Stuart Mill. John Bright, Rich- 
ard Cobden, Goldwin Smith, Justin McCarthy, 
Thomas Hughes, Professor Cairnes, Herbert Spen- 
cer, Baptist Noel, Newman Hall — the brainiest and 
worthiest leaders of British thought and life. Kverv 
one of these, and a host of others, led by the tireless 
and eloquent Thompson, gave weeks and months of 
work in behalf of the Union. If Lancashire suffered 
and made no sign, if the arrogant classes were check- 
mated by the alert masses, if England kept hands 
off in the struggle over here, — we owe it to these 
heroes. Are their names not 

" On fame's eternal bead-roll worthy to be filed ?" 

George Thompson tried to persuade Gerrit Smith 
and Wendell Phillips to proceed to England and co- 
operate there in the creation and direction of public 
opinion. Mr. Phillips was inclined to go ; but was 
held at home bv his wife's infirmities.^ Subse- 






' " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. iv., p. 29, note ; and pp. 65, 68, 

and 71-77. 



* Letter to Gerrit Smith, in '63 (MS). 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 33 1 

quently Henr}^ Ward Beech er, being abroad for rest, 
found what he sought in endless battles with un- 
friendly audiences, in which he won new fame for 
himself, and got ample compensation in the magnifi- 
cent service rendered to his country. When the 
Emancipation Proclamation reached Great Britain, 
its reception there was only less enthusiastic than 
here. " It would have done you good," wrote Mr. 
Chesson to an American friend, " if you had heard 
Baptist Noel's speech, or attended the great meeting 
of the working-classes which we held on December 
31st — the eve of freedom. Newman Hall's speech 
on this occasion was one of the best I ever listened 
to. He stated, in the fairest manner, every con- 
ceivable argument which had been urged in favor of 
the Slave Confederacy, or against the policy of the 
Federal Government, and then replied to them seri- 
atifUy demolishing every sophistry and gibbeting 
every falsehood, until the slavocracy had really not 
a rag left wherewith to conceal the revolting defects 
of their odious cause." ' 

The proclamation, followed as it was by the tre- 
mendous victories of Grant and Meade, gave the 
projected English intervention the coup de grace. 

Already triumphant in anticipation, but without 
relaxing the strain of unceasing exertion, Mr. Phil- 
lips now aided the formation of colored regiments in 
Massachusetts. Two of these were recruited in the 
spring of 1863, and were speedily supplied with the 
maximum number of men. These were the Fifty- 
fourth and the Fifty-fifth regiments. Robert G. 
Shaw was the colonel of one, and Edward N. Hal- 



' Vide " WilHam Lloyd Garrison," vol iv., pp. 72, 73. 



332 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

lowell was the lieutenant-colonel of the other ; both 
warm personal friends of the orator. The Fifty- 
fourth Massachusetts Regiment was the first body 
of colored soldiers despatched from the North. Mr. 
Phillips with Frederick Douglass and Garrison had 
often visited their camp and spoken words of cheer. 
When, on May 28th, 1863, the blacks marched 
proudly through the streets of Boston to embark for 
the front, his heart swelled, and as he stood in the 
mighty throng that lined the sidewalks to cheer their 
departure, startling memories significant of yet more 
stupendous changes made a tumult in his breast*.' 
Others of the on-looking Abolitionists shared in his 
emotion. " You remember," wrote Lydia Maria 
Child, addressing another of the old guard, ' ' Charles 
Sprague's description of scenes he witnessed from a 
window near State Street ? First, Garrison dragged 
through the streets by a mob ; second. Burns car- 
ried back to slavery by United States troops, through 
the same street ; third, a black regiment, marching 
down the same street, to the tune of ' John Brown,' 
to join the United States Army for the emancipation 
of their race. What a thrilling historical poem 
might be made of that !" "" 

These men, and the whole contingent of colored 
troops did splendidly. Their friends had no occa- 
sion either to apologize for them or to regret their 
own efforts to enlist and despatch them.^ 

While these events were in progress, Mr. Phillips 
gave concurrent attention to another matter. He 



^ Letter to Lydia Maria Child (ms.). 

2 " Letters of Lydia Maria Child," p. 235. 

3 Vide George W. Williams's " History of the Colored Troops in the 
Rebellion." 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 333 

had learned from bitter experience that Boston could 
not, that no great city could, decently govern itself. 
State laws, even city lav^^s, w^ere flouted when they 
ran counter to the prejudices or the interests of influ- 
ential classes in the centres of population. Accord- 
ingly, he pleaded for and secured in Boston what is 
called a Metropolitan Police. Speaking from Theo- 
dore Parker's pulpit in the spring of 1863, he said : 

" The capital of the civilized world, London, many years ago, 
found herself utterly unable to contend with the evils of accumu- 
lated population, — found municipal machinery utterly inadequate 
for the security of life or property in her streets ; and the na- 
tional Government, by the hand of Sir Robert Peel, assumed the 
police regulation of that cluster of towns which we commonly 
call London, though the plan does not include the city proper. 
New York, on our continent, about six years ago, followed the 
example ; Baltimore and Cincinnati have done likewise to a 
greater or less extent, and so also have some of the other West- 
ern cities. The experience of all great accumulations of prop- 
erty and population reads us a lesson, that the execution of the 
laws therein demands extra consideration and peculiar machinery. 
The self-organized Safety Committees of San Francisco and other 
cities prove the same fact. Indeed, great cities are nests of 
great vices, and it has been the experience of republics that 
great cities are an exception to the common rule of self-governed 
communities. Neither New York, nor New Orleans, nor Balti- 
more — none of the great cities — has found the ballot-box of its 
individual voters a sufficient protection, through a police organi- 
zation. Great cities cannot be protected on the theory of repub- 
lican institutions. We may like it or not, — seventy years have 
tried the experiment, and, so far, it is a failure ; and if there is 
no resource outside of the city limits, then a self-governed great 
city is, so far as my experience goes, the most uncomfortable 
which any man who loves free speech can live in. It is no sur- 
prise, therefore, that we ask you no longer to let the police force 
represent the voters of Boston." 

Having thus stated the case, he proceeded to re- 



334 WENDELL PlIILLll'S. 

cite the reasons for the change, in the non-execution 
of the temperance laws of the commonwealth, and 
in the denial of free speech. In reply to the objec- 
tion that the proposed change was undemocratic, he 
said : 

" Men say, to take the appointment of the police out of the 
hands of the peninsula is anti-democratic. Why, from 1620 
down to within ten years, the State always acted on that plan. 
The State makes the law. Who executes it ? The State. For 
two hundred years, the Governor appointed the sheriff of every 
county, and the sheriff appointed his deputies, and they executed 
the laws. The constables of the towns were allowed merely a 
subsidiary authority to execute by-laws, and help execute the 
State law. The democratic principle is, that the law shall be 
executed by an executive authority concurrent with that which 
makes it. That is democracy. The State law, naturally, demo- 
cratically, is to be executed by the State. We have merely, in 
deference to convenience, changed that of late in some particu- 
lars, and we may reasonably go back to the old plan if we find 
that, in any particular locality, the new plan fails. Why not ? 
In all other matters of State concern, — Board of Education, 
Board of Agriculture, and all the various boards, — the State has 
the control. You perceive this * anti-democratic * argument can 
be carried out to an absurdity. Suppose the Five Points of New 
York should send word to the Fifth Avenue, ' We don't like 
your police ; we mean to have one of our own, and it will be 
very anti-democratic for you to take the choice of our constables 
out of our hands.' Suppose North Street should send word to 
the City Hall, ' We have concluded to turn every other house 
into a grog-shop, or something almost as bad, and to appoint 
our own police ; please instruct your police to keep out of our 
ward.* We should not say this was democratic. We should 
say, thai as far as the interest of a community in a law extends, 
just so far that community has a right to a hand in the execution 
of it." ' 

It was in the autumn of 186^ that the edition of 






1 '« 



Speeches and Lectures," p 516 sq. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 335 

Mr. Phillips's collected " Speeches and Lectures" 
was first published. The volume was eagerly caught 
up. It had not to wait until centuries should cob- 
web it, but was born a classic. From then until now 
the demand for it has been unceasing. In facetious 
mood, the orator took a copy to his wife, in which 
he had written on the title-page : " Speeches and 
Lectures. By Ann Phillips" — his way of recogniz- 
ing her influence upon his career. 

As the year 1863 waxed old two questions divided 
the country, in addition to the war, though in fact 
growing out of it — reconstruction and the re-election 
of Mr. Lincoln. Having overrun and subjugated 
large sections of the South, the nation was con- 
fronted by the problem as to the practical disposition 
to be made of them. The Administration favored 
the readmission of such portions of these sections as 
were conterminous with the old State boundaries, 
under the ancient State constitutions, altered only 
sufficiently to recognize the freedom of the blacks. 
Mr. Phillips set himself against this. He maintained 
that freedom, in the American conception, was only 
complete when it included the elective franchise and 
equal rights before the law.^ On these vital points 
the State Constitution of Louisiana, which was the 
commonwealth then specially in question, remained 
precisely where it always had stood — ^with a code 7ioir 
as black as Algiers. Because Mr. Lincoln refused 
to make such changes as should harmonize the con- 
quered territories with the American conception of 
freedom, conditions precedent to readmission, the 
Agitator vigorously opposed his renomination. He 



* Vide Liberator^ vol. xxxiv., p. 22. 



336 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

favored any one of half a dozen other names which 
were unobjectionable from an Abolitionist's point of 
view.' The issue was decided in the Republican 
Convention, and in the subsequent national election, 
adversely to Mr. Phillips, who submitted to the in- 
evitable. He was wise in objecting to such shilly- 
shally reconstruction — mistaken in preferring Fre- 
mont to Lincoln ; a man who, when he stumbled, 
always stumbled forward. The position he took at 
this moment brought him into collision with the ma- 
jority of Unionists, — Garrison among the rest."^ 
After events convinced him of his erroneous judg- 
ment." 

The war was now gasping v • ?ward the end. Grant, 
transferred from the West to the East, had struck 
unity and infused vigor into the hitherto unsystem- 
atic and sluggish military operations of the Union. 
Sherman marched through the Confederacy to the 
sea, — Lee was pushed back, stubbornly but vainly 
contesting ever}^ step, — Richmond was captured, ^ — ■ 
Appomattox was reached, — and, on April 9th, 1865, 
the Rebellion collapsed ! 

Side by side with these victories of war strode 
other victories of peace. The nation had been con- 
vinced at last that there could be no permanent rec- 
onciliation until slavery w^as buried in the grave 
which yawned to receive the Confederacy. This 
conviction, after the fashion of popular government, 
soon expressed itself in appropriate legislation. 



' Vide various speeches and acts of Mr. Phillips at this period, as 
reported in the Liberator, vol. xxxiv., pp. 8i, 83, 87, 94. 

"^ Vide " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. iv., pp. 107-12. 

^ " Lincoln was slow, but he got there. Let us thank God for him.** 
Thus he wrote, in 1866, to the Rev. John T, Sargent (ms.Y 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 33/ 

Maryland and Missouri made haste to join the sister- 
hood of free States. Illinois repealed her " black 
laws/' as infamous as the kindred codes of the South, 
and more inexcusable. Then came the Thirteenth 
Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, 
forever abolishing slavery. Coupled with the top- 
pling military fortunes of the Confederacy, as they 
were, it is not surprising that these transcendent 
achievements should have produced a frenzy of joy 
from ocean to ocean. Men hugged one another in 
the streets. The churches sent the Amen of the 
nation into the ear of God — to whom a grateful con- 
tinent ascribed the glory ! 

While all were happy, the colored people were 
exultant. They celebrated the jubilee from the Gulf 
to the Lakes. One memorable meeting of this kind 
specially concerns us — the Boston Celebration. For 
George Thompson (who had hurried across the At- 
lantic to be ** in at the death") and Garrison and 
Phillips were with them to voice their feelings.* But 
the eloquence of the occasion itself out-thundered 
even such orators. Slavery was dead ! Immediate 
and unconditional emancipation was embalmed in 
the fundamental law of the Republic ! The pro- 
phetic vision of Wendell Phillips was realized : 

" When the smoke of this conflict clears away, the world will 
see under our banner one brotherhood — and on the banks of the 
Potomac, the Genius of Liberty, robed in light, four-and-thirty 
stars for her diadem, broken chains under her feet, and an olive 
branch in her right hand." ^ 



* Vtdtr Liberator, vol. xxxv., p. 37. 

* " Speeches and Lectures," p. 414, 



XXVI. 

SHADOW IN SUNSHINE. 

On April 14th, 1865, exactly four years after the 
surrender of Fort Sumter, the vindicated and glori- 
fied flag was raised again over the very citadel whence 
it had been snatched by treason, and the Stars and 
Stripes waved above the cradle and the grave of the 
Rebellion. The company gathered to take part in 
the dramatic ceremonial was notable, and included 
Major Anderson (the hero of both dates), Judge 
Holt, Senator Henry Wilson, H. W. Beecher (the 
orator of the day), and by special invitation of the 
National Government, those twins of Abolition, 
George Thompson and William Lloyd Garrison. 

Garrison in Charleston ! And without the smell 
of tar upon his garments ! One never-to-be-forgot- 
ten morning, he stood at the tomb of Calhoun. Lay- 
ing his hand upon the monument, the Abolitionist 
said solemnly : *' Down into a deeper grave than 
this slavery has gone, and for it there is no resurrec- 
tion." Fit the hour, fit the man, and fit the place 
for the burial service of human bondage.^ Devils 
shrieked, but angels chanted " Alleluia !" 

Later, on the same day, the blacks gave their 
friend a delirious welcome. Surrounded by wildly 
applauding thousands he stood ; when out from the 



Vide Liberator, vol. xxxv. , p. 76, 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 339 

press came the spokesman of the negroes, leading 
two Httle girls, neatly dressed, by the hand. Ad- 
dressing Mr. Garrison, he said : 

"Sir, it is witli pleasure that is inexpressible that I welcome 
you here among us, the long, the steadfast friend of the poor, 
down-trodden slave. Sir, I have read of you. I have read of 
the mighty labors you have had for the consummation of this 
glorious object. Here you see stand before you your handi- 
work. These children were robbed from me, and I stood deso- 
late. Many a night I pressed a sleepless pillow from the time 
I returned to my bed until the morning. I lost a dear wife, 
and after her death that little one, who is the counterpart 
of her mother's countenance, was taken from me. I appealed 
for her with all the love and reason of a father. The rejec- 
tion came forth in these words : * Annoy me not, or I will sell 
them off to another State.* I thank God that, through your in- 
strumentality, under the folds of that glorious flag which treason 
tried to triumph over, you have restored them to me. And I tell 
you that it is not this heart alone, but there are mothers, there 
are fathers, there are sisters, and there are brothers, the pulsa- 
tions of whose hearts are unimaginable. The greeting that they 
would give you, sir, is almost impossible for me to express ; but, 
sir, we welcome and look upon you as our saviour. We thank 
you for what you have done for us. Take this wreath from 
these children ; and when you go home, never mind how faded 
the flowers may be, preserve them, encase them, and keep them 
as a token of affection from one who has lived and loved." 
{Cheers.') ' 

And a man who could thus think, feel, express 
himself, a few months before had been an article of 
merchandise ! ^ 

Toward evening of this day, to him, of pleasurable 
experiences, Mr. Garrison went out to the adjacent 



^ Vide Liberator^ vol, xxxv., p. 72. 

^ His name was Samuel Dickerson. His speech was his own, and 
was conceived and spoken as given above. 



340 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

camp of the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts (colored) Regi- 
ment. Crowded around were the plantation 
" hands," clothed in the rags and ignorance inher- 
ited from the dead iniquity. " Well," cried Mr. 
Garrison, " you are free at last. Let us give three 
cheers.** He led off. To his amazement, there was 
no response. The poor creatures looked at him 
\vith a surprise equal to his own. He had to give 
the second and the third cheers also without them. 
TJiey did not know how to cheer ! * 

If the scene at Charleston was dramatic, the scene 
at Washington was more so — tragedy outdone. 
While Garrison was being feted^ on the very day 
described, Lincoln lay dead. The creator of the 
Anti-Slavery movement in x\merica Avas in Carolina, 
rejoicing with the freedmen. The President who 
was the instrument of the emancipation, was in 
heaven, presenting three millions of broken fetters 
before the throne of Justice and Love. 

Amid the general consternation caused by the 
bullet of Wilkes Booth, Mr. PhiUips was besought 
to express the sorrow and recite the lesson of the 
hour. This he did, on April 19th, in the Tremont 
Temple, in Boston : 

" These are sober days. The Judgments of God have found 
us out. Thirty years ago, none heeded the fire and gloom 
which slumbered below. It was nothing that a giant sin gagged 
our pulpits ; that its mobs ruled our cities, burned men at the 
stake for their opinions, and hunted them like wild beasts for 
their humanity. It was nothing that in the lonely quiet of the 
plantation the eye of lust and the whip of rage fell on the un- 
pitied person of the slave. In vain did a thousand witnesses 
crowd our highways telling the world the horrors of the prison- 



' Vide " William Lloyd Garrison," vol iv., p. 149. 



J 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 34I 

house. None stopped to consider. None believed. But what 
the world would not look at, God has set to-day in a light so 
ghastly that it dazzles us blind. What we would not believe, 
God has written all over the face of the continent with the 
sword's point, in the blood of our best beloved. We believe the 
agony of the slave's hovel when it takes its seat at our own 
board. 

" And what of him in whose life fluid this lesson is writ ? He 
sleeps in the blessings of the poor whose fetters God commis- 
sioned him to break. Who among living men may not envy 
him ? Suppose that, when a boy, he floated on the slow current 
of the Mississippi, idly gazing at the slave upon its banks, some 
angel had lifted the curtain and shown him that in his prime he 
should see America rocked to its foundation in the effort to 
break these chains, and should himself marshal the hosts of the 
Almighty in the grandest and holiest war that Christendom ever 
knew, and hurl the thunderbolt of justice that should smite the 
proud system to the dust : then die, leaving a name immortal in 
the sturdy pride of one race and in the undying gratitude of 
another. Would any credulity, however sanguine, would any 
enthusiasm, however fervid, have enabled him to believe it ? 
Fortunate man ! He lived to do it !** * 

As in a drama, subsidiary incidents, kindred and 
suggestive, lead up to the great tableaux, so the two 
scenes enacted at Charleston and at Washington 
were preceded or accompanied by other examples 
of retributive justice, undreamed-of contrast, and 
startling coincidence. Harper's Ferry had been 
burned by General Tyndale, who three years before 
went to Virginia to claim the body of John Brown 
and take it North, — then insulted and threatened, 
now putting the torch to the hotel where the mob 
raged on him, and only stopping the conflagration, 
when it reached the engine-house, ** the Gibraltar," 



* Vide the Boston press of April 20th, 1865, for reports of this strik* 
ing address, not otherwise in print. 



342 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

as Wendell Phillips called it, " from which the brave 
old man fired the first gun at Virginia slavery." ' 

A daughter of John Brown had established a 
school for colored children in the very residence of 
Henry A. Wise, the governor who hung her father, 
and ** old Ossawatomie's" portrait hung on the 
wall of the slave-holder and looked down approv- 
ingly upon the work. A son of Frederick Douglass 
was likewise teaching in Marjland, in the place 
where the negro orator had been a slave, and whence 
he had followed the North Star to freedom. The 
plantation of Jefferson Davis had been transformed 
into a " contraband" camp, and was finally bought 
and worked by the former slaves of the Confederate 
President. The estate of General Lee, at Arling- 
ton, became a freedmen's village, with a " Garrison 
Street** and a " Lovejoy Street," and at last a rest- 
ing-place for the Union dead.^ Mighty tragedy ! 
Vv'hose four acts were four 3^ears, with a continent 
for a stage, with two races for the actors, and with 
episodes and d^nouemeyits unimaginable. 

The first feeling of the Abolitionists was that now 
their work was done. On second thought, they 
perceived their mistake. The freedmen, without 
civil rights, ignorant, poor, needed sympathy and 
direction almost as desperately as they had needed 
emancipation. They were but half free, in a repub- 
lic, until they were seated in self-ownership, not 
only, but clothed and in their right mind as citizens. 

So far all were agreed. At the annual meeting of 
the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York 



^ Vide Liberator^ vol. xxxiii., p. 37. 

* Vide " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. iv., p. 133. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 343 

City, in May, 1865, the pioneers disagreed as to the 
continuation of the old agencies. Mr. Garrison con- 
tended that the national society should dissolve at 
this session, since slavery was abolished ; that its 
existence isolated its members when isolation was no 
longer needful, as co-workers abounded, and that 
what remained to be done could be done better 
through other channels.' Mr. Phillips differed. He 
emphasized the fact that the Thirteenth Amendment, 
though passed b}^ Congress, had not yet been ratified 
by the States, and that hence slavery was not legally 
abolished ; that the historic position of the society 
outside of parties and churches gave it moral au- 
thority, vindicated by the past, and mightier in 
present circumstances ; that its pledge bound it in 
spirit, if not verbally, to life and action until the 
freedom of the blacks should be signed and sealed 
not alone by emancipation but by citizenship ; and 
that Abolitionists could labor for these ends most 
efficiently on their time-honored platform.' 

The discussion was prolonged and warm, Messrs. 
Edmund Quincy, Oliver Johnson, and Samuel May, 
Jr., concurring with Mr. Garrison ; while Anna EJ. 
Dickinson, Frederick Douglass, Robert Purvis,.i 
Charles Lennox Remond, and others supported MrJ 
Phillips. The society resolved to go on by a vote 
of 118 to 48. Mr. Phillips was elected President, 
and succeeded Mr. Garrison, who pei^sisted in re- 
tiring. Aaron M. Powell took editorial charge of 
the society's organ, the Anti-Slavery Standard, re- 
placing Messrs. Quincy and Johnson, who also with- 



* Vide "William Lloyd GarNson,'* vol. iv., p. 157 sqq, 

• Vide Liberator, vol. xxxv., pp. 81, 82, 



344 WENDELL PHILLirs. 

drew. A new Executive Committee was chosen. 
Then an adjournment was carried amid great rejoic- 
ing.* 

Two weeks later, the debate was transferred to 
the anniversary meeting of the Massachusetts Anti- 
Slavery " Society, in Boston; and later still to the 
annual meeting of the New England Society, in the 
same city ; when Mr. Phillips again triumphed by 
a majority ot three to one ;"' and he thus held these 
three organizations together throughout the heated 
and perilous period of reconstruction. 

This controversy divided the veterans into two 
camps, a larger and a smaller, at an hour when it 
would have been wiser for them to have remained 
united. It kept some at the front and sent others to 
the rear, when all were needed in the battle. It also 
caused bad feeling at the time — which eventually 
gave place to the old friendhness. Mr. Phillips, 
however, neither felt nor expressed himself toward 
the schismatics, otherwise than wi^.h the heartiness 
of former years. He realized that the difference 
was one of expediency rather than principle — of 
methods, not of objects. Hence, he went on loving 
and lauding Mr. Garrison as of yore.^ 

An evidence of the changed attitude of Boston 
toward its most illustrious son was given in the sum- 
mer of 1865, b}' a pressing request which reached 
him from the School Committee, to address the chil- 
dren of the city at their annual Festival, on July 28th. 
Mr. Phillips complied, and showered down reminis- 
cences, anecdotes, aphorisms, sage bits of advice. 



* Vide " William Lloyd Garrison," vol. iv., p. i6i. ' Ii>.f p. 175. 

* Fi'rfV Liberato7\ vol. xxxv., p. 26. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 345 

exhortations to lofty duty, in a manner so genial and 
charming, that young and old were alike instructed 
and captivated. In a hasty note he described the 
scene to a friend detained by illness : 

" I spoke at the Children's FestivaL Such a sight ! twelve 
hundred lads and lasses ; twelve hundred more adults, digni- 
taries, etc., with Zerrahn's great orchestra. I was popular and 
bewildered. Hisses I understand, but cheers, and such cheers ! 
However, the sight of some old faces, Mauley's black beard, 
and Stearns's long one, and George Thompson* in the audience 
taking snuff, reassured me. I followed Dana, upon a cricket, 
three feet square (where Zerrahn stands to lead the band). I 
spoke without gesture ; fearing if I moved a finger, I should 
topple over on one side and fall into Mayor Lincoln's arms." ^ 

There was no evidence of these straitened circum- 
stances in the orator's address, at any rate — neither 
in the matter nor in the manner of it. Which goes 
to show that the eye and the ear are not very trust- 
worthy witnesses. 

The closing event of the year 1865 was the formal 
proclamation of the ratification by the requisite num- 
ber of States (twenty-seven out of thirty-six) of the 
Thirteenth Amendment forever prohibiting slavery 
in the Republic. What remained to be done ? The 
next and necessary step was the vitalizing the pro- 
hibition by securing for the freedmen equal rights 
before the law. Involuntary servitude was illegal. 
Now the black man must be lifted into his place be- 
side the white man, with the ballot as his certificate 
of citizenshio. 



* Mr. Thompson soon after returned to England, where he diedj 
October 7th, 1878. 
' Letter to Rev. John T. Sargent (ms.). 






BOOK III. 
AFTERNOON. 

1866-1879. 



I. 

FROM BATTLE-FIELD TO FORUM. 

Broadly grouped, two policies now divided the 
country. One was the ** grasp-of-war" policy. It 
rested on the facts of the case, — the non-existence of 
local governments in the Southern States, — their 
military occupation, — the unprecedented condition 
of the population, with the whites self-despoiled of 
power and the blacks newly emancipated, — and the 
necessity of subordinating all else to the welfare of 
the Republic. The other was the ** insurrection" 
policy. It assumed that the Sojthern States re- 
tained their autonomy ; that the war power ended 
with the cessation of actual hostilities ; that no au- 
thority remained with the National Government save 
such as it held over the States which had not seceded ; 
and that the South should be permitted at once to 
reorganize on the former basis, subject only to the 
Thirteenth Amendment. The first was the policy of 
the Republican party, — the second that of the Demo- 
cratic party. Between these theories, however, an 
infinite variety of views prevailed, founded on one 
or the other of them, but shading off into the ex- 
tremes, with every imaginable intervening color — 
the rainbow outvied. 

The martyr President was hardly cold in the grave 
before his successor revealed his purpose to desert 
his party and " secede" to the Democracy. An- 



350 WENDELL PlilLLIPS. 

drew Johnson had posed as a radical, was steeped 
in pledges to bind the sheaves gleaned by the war- 
sickle, and was hailed by the radicals as a distinct 
advance upon Lincoln, — as the special representative 
of the extreme Union sentiment. Sprung from the 
lowest class at the South, he was without education, 
but possessed native vigor and a strong will. Thus 
dowered, he extemporized what he styled " my 
policy," which was essentially a Southern pro- 
gramme, and set himself to wrest from the nation 
the fruits of its hard-won success. 

In common with the majont}^ Mr. Phi^^^ps had 
turned expectantly to President Johnson. " I be- 
lieve in him," said he.' Bitter, therefore^, was his 
chagrin, unspeakable his disgust, when the patriot 
of yesterday dropped the mask and disclosed the 
traitor of to-day. He instantlj' tramed his guns and 
opened fire upon this new enemy. ** Jefferson Davis 
Johnson, ' ' the orator dubbed him.* And he regarded 
the situation as more critical than it had been at any 
time since 1861. Everything was at stake, nothing 
w^as decided. The South was still a unit, angry 
from defeat, and enraged at the freedmen. The North 
was again divided. The battle was adjourned from 
Appomattox to Washington, and there seemed every 
reason to fear that the poisonous remnants of the 
slave system would linger and fester for half a cen- 
tury — like Jacobitism in England or Bourbonism in 
France.^ 

Late in the year 1865 he wrote to a relative : 



* Vide Liberator^ vol. xxxv., p. 86. 

* Vide A nti- Slavery Standard, vol. xxviii., August Ilth. 
' Vide Liberator, vol. xxiv. , p. 8i, 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 351 

" As for the cause, everything I hear, public and private, from 
Washington, increases my anxiety about this suffrage question. 
We shall get all we absolutely bully out of this Administration, 
and no more. Four of the Cabinet are right ; but I fear the 
President is wrong. All this makes so much more important, 
not merely advocating the negro's right to the ballot, but letting 
the Government know that we oppose it if it does not grant this. 
As Charles Sumner said to Lincoln, * Reconstruct on the basis 
of the Declaration of Independence, or count me among the op- 
ponents of your Administration.' That is the talk and action 
which governments hear and obey." ' 

The dangers of that nightmare hour were aggra- 
vated by the purpose of the Administration to huddle 
together any pretext of a government and railroad 
the seceded States back into the Union, in order to 
secure for Johnson the Southern vote in the election 
of 1868 ; the renegade being troubled by that pecul- 
iar American political distemper yclept the Presi- 
dential bee in the bonnet. 

Mr. Seward was the Mephistopheles of the scene : 
"How many stars do we want on the flag?" he 
asked, ** shall we not have them all .^" To which 
James Russell Lowell replied : "As many ^jir^</ stars 
as 3^ou please, but no more shooting ones." ^ 

Mr. Phillips never before or afterward experienced 
such anxious and laborious days and nights. He was 
drained in mind, body, and purse. The withdrawal 
of Mr. Garrison in this grave emergency thrust upon 
him the duty of sustaining the Anti-Slavery societies, 
formulating their platforms, and animating their 
gatherings. He became an editorial contributor to 
the Anti-Slavery Standardy and from this coigne of 



^ Letter to Miss Grew (ms.). 

' Vide Anti-Slavery Standard^ vol. xxvii., No. 29. 



352 WENDELL PHILLirS. 

vantage discharged sharp arrows into the ranko of 
the opposition, as the Saracen in Scott's stor}^ ma- 
noeuvred against the Knight of the Leopard. These 
contributions, continued during four 3^ears, covered 
the whole field of controversy, and frequently in- 
cluded outside topics, as the Indian question, and a 
succession of pleas for the enfranchisement of the 
Chinese.* As time passed, too, and one and another 
of the veterans exchanged earth for heaven, he pub- 
lished in the Standard obituaries marked by the ex- 
quisite taste and appreciative beauty characteristic 
of the man.^ 

Mr. Phillips was in touch with Sumner, Wilson, 
Wade, in the Senate, with Kelley, Stevens, Colfax, 
in the House, and with the formers and leaders of 
public opinion in the communit3\ He was recog- 
nized as the most prominent figure in unofficial life. 
Every word he spoke or wrote had the weight of an 
oracle. His articles were regularly transferred 
from the columns of the Standard to the pages of the 
leading journals of both parties.^ His speeches were 
caught up and echoed with similar eagerness across 

' Vide Anti- Slavery Standard, vols, xxvii., xxviii., xxix., xxx.,/aj- 
shn . 

''lb, 

* An indication of this is found in the following editorial remarks, 
clipped from the Rochester, N. Y., Morning Express, and quoted in 
the Standard, vol. xxviii., April 20th : *' We print to-day the latest of 
Mr. Phillips's articles, as we have for months printed his editorials. 
No other man in the country has been so gloriously and generally 
right during the last quarter of a century as Wendell Phillips. He is 
the soul of integrity, and is as chivalrous as Bayard. To this ground- 
work of manly and useful character, he adds a remarkable political 
sagacity which no partisan could possibly possess. His writings and 
speeches are certain to become classics and will be read and readable 
centuries hence." 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 353 

the continent. "What does Phillips say?" was a 
first inquiry regarding each new phase of the strug- 
gle ; and what he said shaped thought and made 
sentiment surprisingly. At no other period since 
their organization, had the American Anti-Slavery 
Society, the New England Anti-Slavery Society, and 
the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society possessed 
the influence they now wielded ; and they were so 
many multiplications of Wendell Phillips, worked 
by his friends and vitalized by his spirit. The inde- 
pendence of these bodies, with no candidate to elect, 
no party to guard, no personal interests to jeopard, 
and contending alone for essential principles, dis- 
armed suspicion and opened the public ear and mind. 
The statesmen at the Capital gratefully recognized 
the value of their service. ** Hold the societies to- 
gether," wrote Sumner to Phillips, ** the crisis is 
grave. You and they are doing indispensable work ; 
in this I express the conviction of every Senator and 
every Representative on our side of pending ques- 
tions." ' The crowds in attendance upon the meet- 
ings, and the reception of Mr. Phillips's utterances, 
show the feelings of the people. 

In May, 1866, at the anniversary of the American 
Anti-Slavery Society, Mr. Phillips photographed 
the situation in the following antithetical resolution : 

" The Rebellion has not ceased, it has only changed its 
weapons. Once it fought, now it intrigues ; once it followed 
Lee in arms, now it follows President Johnson in guile and chi- 
canery ; once its headquarters were in Richmond, now it en- 
camps in the White House." ^ 



* Letter from Sumne.% March 17th, i866 (ms.). 

' Vide Anti- Slavery Standard, vol. xxvii.. May igth. 



354 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

In speaking on this resolution, he said : 

'* I have a great delight in taming animals. Rarey is a hero 
of mine. The other day I read of the taming of a lion in Paris, 
They took a stuffed hussar jacket, covered with a hundred brass 
buttons, and they put it in the den. He tore it to pieces and 
devoured it and had an awful fit of indigestion — lay a sick lion 
for a week. Afterward, whenever a man clad in a hussar jacket 
came into the cage, the lion lay silent and submissive before 
him. He would never touch a hussar jacket, whatever it had 
in it. Now America devoured one hussar jacket with ' John 
Tyler ' written on it, and another with ' F'illmore * written on 
it, and now another in Andy Johnson. Not as wise as the 
brute, in spite of political indigestion, this nation goes on de- 
vouring hussar jackets." * 

In the summer of 1866, Mr. Phillips was urged 
to accept a nomination for Congress from his dis- 
trict. It was felt that he might be there what John 
Bright was in Parliament. Journals like the Com- 
monwealth and the Voice, in Boston, the Daily Times 
and the Independent , in New York, strongly favored 
the project. The Agitator, however, better under- 
stood his own mood and habit. He refused even to 
consider a nomination. His position now was 
unique ; made so by his perfect independence. 
When the elder Pitt was made Earl of Chatham and 
passed out of the House of Commons and into the 
House of Lords, the great Commoner went into 
eclipse. Some one missing the familiar figure, asked 
Chesterfield w^hat had become of Pitt. " He has 
had a fall upstairs," was the answer. Phillips did 
not wish to abdicate his present office and lose him- 
self in the crowd of Congressional nobodies, — to fall 
upstairs. He preferred to remain untrammelled, as 



* Vide A nti' Slavery Standard^ vol. xxvii., May igth. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 355 

a professor of ethics in the university of the Ameri- 
can conscience. 

Using", then, the old agencies, and continuing to 
serve the Lyceum, he went up and down instruct- 
ing, warning, inspiring. From the close of the war 
onward, Mr. Phillips was in enormous demand. No 
lecture course was esteemed complete without him. 
His name was an unfailing magnet. Had he been 
twelve instead of one, and could he have given every 
night in the year to the Lyceum, the calls would not 
have been met. The lecture season began in the 
autumn and ended in the following spring. Months 
in advance his dates were filled. The season of 
1866-67 he opened in Boston with . lecture on " The 
Swindling Congress," viz., the Thirty-ninth, which 
put juggles for justice. It was in this lecture that 
he said : 

" There have never been any friends of the Southerner in the 
Northern States but the Abolitionists. The Democrats deluded 
him ; the Whigs cheated him ; the Abolitionists stood on his 
border and said : ' It is in vain for you to fight against the 
thick bosses of Jehovah's buckler. You are endeavoring to sus- 
tain a system that repudiates the laws of God and the spirit of 
the nineteenth century ; put it away, or you will make blood and 
bankruptcy your guests.' But the maddened South closed its 
eyes and rushed on to destruction. Now we say, ' Come into 
line with the age, found your economy on righteousness, and 
then spindles will make vocal every stream and fill every val- 
ley.* " » 

From Boston the lecturer proceeded Westward 
and was welcomed everywhere enthusiastically.' 
During the day and on Sundays he usually spoke on 



^ Vide Anti-Siavery Standard, vol. xxvii.. No. 42. 
' lb,, vol, xxvii., March gth. 



356 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

'' Temperance ;" in the evenings, as often as possible, 
on the crisis.' His remedy for existing ills was sim- 
ple — land, education, and the ballot for the negro ; 
and the means he found in the war power under 
which the nation had the right to make itself safe.' 
At Keokuk, la., one of the dailies said of his lecture 
there : 

" His arguments grow on you. You are pleased and inter- 
ested while he speaks ; it is not until afterward that he becomes 
wonderful to you. You shouldn't commence to pass judgment 
on his speeches earlier than twelve hours after their delivery. 
The strict enforcement of this rule would damage the reputation 
of most orators ; this man it would enthrone and crown as king 
in the realm of suggestive thought." ^ 

At St. Louis, the Daily Despatch printed his lecture 
on the " Times" in full and remarked editorially : 
" Wendell Phillips has exercised a greater influence 
on the destinies of the country as a private man than 
an}^ public man, or men, of his age." * 

From x\lton. III, on April 14th, 1867, Mr. Phillips 
wrote to the 5/^;z</rt'r^,-.describing the grave of Love- 
joy, and added : 

*' The gun fired at him was like that at Sumter— it scattered 
a world of dreams. Looking back, how wise as well as noble 
his course was. Incredible, that we should have been compelled 
to defend his * prudence.' What world-wide benefactors these 
* imprudent ' men are I How ' prudently ' most men creep into 
nameless graves ; while now and then one or two forget them- 
selves into immortality." ' 

The orator returned to Boston the third week in 
April well and in good spirits, after giving over sixty 



* Vide And- Slavery Standard, vol. xxvii., March gth. '^ lb.. No. la 
2 Keokuk Gate City, ^ Cited in Standard, vol. xxviii., April 27th. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 357 

lectures and travelling more than twelve thousand 
miles.* 

In May we find him in New York City in attend- 
ance on the annual meeting of the American Anti- 
wSlavery Society ; the sessions being spicy and 
thronged. A week later, he was in Boston on the 
platform of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, 
where he said : 

" Our effort should be to infect the South with the North, — 
the North of education and equality, — the North of toleration 
and self-respecting labor, — the North of books and brains. If 
the South had conquered us, she would have called the roll of 
her slaves on Bunker Hill and put her flag over Faneuil Hall 
Our victory means, ought to mean, Bunker Hill in the Carolinas 
and Faneuil Hall in New Orleans." ^ 

An event occurred in the summer of 1867 which 
gave Mr. Phillips pain and entailed upon him great 
expense. Francis Jackson, dying in Boston some 
years before, had left a will bequeathing $10,000 to 
the Anti-Slavery cause. Of this will Messrs. Phil- 
lips, Garrison, Bowditch, Quincy, May, Whipple, 
and Edmund Jackson, the testator's brother, were 
executors, with Mr. Phillips as chairman. The Thir- 
teenth Amendment abolished slavery before the 
money became available. The question then arose 
among the executors as to the proper disposition of 
the fund. The majority agreed with Mr. Phillips 
that it ought to go toward the support of the Anti- 
Slavery Standard in the battle for negro enfranchise- 
ment. The minority, composed of seceders from 
the American Ant'-Slavery Society, and not in sym- 



' Vide Anti Slavery Standard, vol. xxviii., April 27th. 

« lb. Report of May Anniversary in Boston. First week in May. 



358 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

pathy with its organ, wished to hand over the be- 
quest to the Freedmen's Union for educational pur- 
poses. The court assured the executors that the 
money should follow their recommendation, if they 
were agreed. They could not agree, and it went by 
direction of the court to the use designated by the 
minority. " Thus,'* wrote Mr. Phillips, in an ex- 
planatory letter to the Standard^ ** the money of Mr. 
Jackson was diverted from the object to which he 
devoted it, because a minority of his trustees were 
not willing to accord to the majority that liberty 
which the majority granted them, and report a plan 
to which all could agree.'* * Such a plan had been 
agreed upon, by which the fund was to be divided 
between the Standard and the freedmen. Mr. Gar- 
rison, on the eve of departing for Europe, withdrew 
his assent to it, with the result narrated. Fie based 
his action on the recent passage of the Civil Rights 
Act, under which certain privileges were secured to 
the blacks.'^ But as it required two additional 
amendments to the Constitution to complete the en- 
franchisement of the negro race, and as these were 
not finally ratified until years later, it should seem 
that his excuse was flimsy. It is impossible to avoid 
the conclusion that the conduct of the minority of 
the trustees was dictated by pique and grudge. 
They discharged a Parthian arrow at the cause 
which persisted in living after they had pronounced 
the funeral oration. The immediate effect of it w^as 
to throw upon Mr. Phillips, personally, a load of 



* Ficff Anti- Slavery Standard, vol. xxviii., August loth and 24th. 
The minority consisted of Messrs. Garrison, Quincy, and May. 

• Vidt^^ William Lloyd Garrison," vol. iv,, p. 237 sq. 



" WENDELL PHILLIPS. 359 

pecuniary responsibility which the fund would have 
helped him to carry. And all this was understood. 
He thought this conduct was unkind and unworthy, 
and felt it keenly ; in which thought and feeling his 
friends did and do concur. 

An Anti-Slavery Conference was called to meet in 
Paris, in August, 1867, for a comparison of views on 
the part of distinguished Abolitionists from all quar- 
ters of the globe. From this gathering Mr. Phillips 
excused himself, on the ground that the battle was 
still raging in America. He held that absence at 
such a moment would be like a soldier's leaving the 
front for the rear, and exchanging wounds for honors 
in the midst of the fight.* There might be a time 
for junketing, but it had not yet come over here. 

The Agitator gave the first week in November, 
1867, to the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society and 
held large and successful meetings in Philadelphia 
and the vicinity. At Wilmington, Del., he received 
a written welcome, signed by prominent citizens, 
and a Godspeed in his work." Thence he proceeded 
on his lecture tour for the season of 1867-68. An 
interesting incidental visit was paid at Vassar Col- 
lege, where he addressed the Literary Societies on 
*' Street Life in Europe." The young ladies were 
interested in the lecture and charmed with the lec- 
turer.^ 

In the course of the season Mr. Phillips addressed 
the Lyceum at Gloucester, Mass., and, returning 
home by the cars the next morning, fell in with a 
lady who got upon the train at a way-station. She 



* Vide A nil- Slavery Standard, vol. xxviil., September 2ist. 

• lb., November i6th. * /<^., December 17th. 



360 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

was a Southern refugee, who had been suddenly re- 
duced from affluence to poverty, and was support- 
ing herself and her fatherless children by giving an 
occasional lecture before a country audience. It 
was a struggle ; for the field was full, and she was 
almost unknown and friendless ; but with a brave 
heart she worked on, never asking a dollar of aid 
from any society or individual. Mr. Phillips saw 
her get upon the car, and asked her to take a seat 
beside him. It was a winter day ; and she was thinly 
clad, shivering from the exposure of a long ride in 
thq open air of the cold morning. Observing this, 
Mr. Phillips asked : 

** Where did you speak last night?'* 

She told him it was at a town about ten miles dis- 
tant from the railway. 

*' And — I wouldn't be impertinent — how much did 
they pay you ?'* 

*' Five dollars, and the fare to and from Bos- 
ton." 

** Five dollars !" he exclaimed ; ** why, I always 
get one or two hundred ; and your lecture must be 
worth more than mine, — you give facts, I only opin- 
ions.*' 

** Small as it is, I am very glad to get it, Mr. Phil- 
lips," answered the lady. *' I would talk at that 
rate every night during the winter." 

He sat for a moment in silence ; then he put his 
hand into his pocket, drew out a roll of bank-notes, 
and said, in a hesitating way : 

** I don't want to give offence, but you know I 
preach that a woman is entitled to the same as a man 
if she does the same work. Now, my price is one 
or two hundred dollars ; and, if you will let me 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 361 

divide it with you, I shall not have had any more 
than you, and the thing will be even." 

The lady at first refused ; but, after a little gentle 
urging, she put the bank-notes into her purse. xVt 
the end of her journey, she counted the roll, and 
found it contained one hundred dollars. It may add 
a point to this incident to say (what is the truth) that 
the lady was a niece of Jefferson Davis.' 

The most generous of men, Mr. Phillips was also 
the most tender. His friends, Mr. and Mrs. Aaron 
M. Powell, lost a rose-bud daughter in the winter of 
1867. Here is his letter of condolence, valuable for 
the insight it gives, and for its disclosure of his 
faith : 

" December 22. 

" I know how weak words are to comfort you in such a loss. 
Be sure our hearts go out to you in loving and tenderest sym- 
pathy. God give you all consolation, and hold up your hearts. 

" These little pets twine around our hearts so closely, it is such 
agony to part from them ! But such partings wean us, as we 
need to be, from these scenes. How near and dear that world 
becomes after such transfers ! After all, this dear blessing, lent 
for a little while, is not taken away, only lifted that you may 
more easily look up to it." * 

President Johnson was now completely alienated 
from his party and in collision at all points with Con- 
gress. He stood as the great obstructionist, veto- 
ing reconstruction legislation as fast as bills were 
passed. A clamor arose for his impeachment, which 
was undertaken. Mr. Phillips favored it in the 
Standard and on the platform. He laughed over 
and quoted far and wide the witticism of Petroleum 



' Austin's " Life and Times of Wendell Phillips," pp. 243-45. 
- Letter to Aaron M, Powell (ms.). 



362 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

V. Nasby : " The President docs not believe that 
power should be concentrated in three or four hun- 
dred men in Congress, but thinks it ought to be 
safely diffused throughout the hands of one man — 
A. Johnson." 

The outcome of the Johnson muddle was that the 
President was not impeached out of office, but in the 
course of the struggle his power was extensively 
curtailed. Phillips, Lincoln-like, put it in a story : 
" Congress has deposed him without impeachment. 
* Friend, Til not shoot thee,' said the Quaker to the 
foot-pad, ' but I'll hold thy head in the water until 
thee drown thyself.' The Republican partv has 
taken a leaf cut of that scrupulous Christian's 
book." ' He thought that the Executive power had 
unduly increased and needed to be diminished. The 
present condition of Johnson reminded him of the 
English monarchy : " Heaven forbid that the land 
of the Tudors and Stuarts should abolish royalty. 
Keep kings ; but, like the Egyptian mummy-makers, 
draw out all blood and reduce them to forms. The 
function of an English monarch nowadays is, like 
that of the queen bee, to be fed and beget succes- 
sors. 

The months of February and March, 1868, Mr. 
Phillips spent in the West/ In May he was again in 
attendance on the anniversary of the American Anti- 
Slavery Society in New York City. The uppermost 
question just now was as to who should succeed Presi- 
dent Johnson. General Grant was apparently the 
coming man. The orator ( pposed his nomination 



^ Standard, vol. xxviii., July 27th. ' lb 

^ lb., months of February and March, /ajj-m. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 363 

for two reasons : First, because he lacked civil ex- 
perience ; second, because he had not pronounced 
himself on the issues of the day. He contended that 
a civilian, not a soldier, was needed in the White 
House—that the standard-bearer should be a man of 
outspoken convictions, not a sphinx.' Through the 
summer and fall of 1868 this was his constant, his un- 
popular, and his unsuccessful plea, — this, and the 
reiterated demand for negro suffrage. " Having in 
the past," he cried, with reference to the latter topic, 
" done full justice to the countrymen of Emmet and 
O'Connell, of Goethe and Korner, even of Isaiah and 
the Maccabees, let us give to the negro a chance to 
show that Toussaint L'Ouverture was not a splendid 
monster, but a fair representative of the capacity of 
his race." '^ 

Under Radical prodding, Congress had passed a 
fourteenth amendment to the Constitution ; which, 
despite the frantic opposition of President Johnson, 
die Southern whites, and the Northern Democracy, 
the requisite number of States at length adopted- 
public proclamation of the fact being made in July, 
1 868. This made the freedmen citizens of the United 
States and of the several States w^herein they were 
domiciled, but it left each State to regulate the right 
to vote. It was another instalment of justice. Pub- 
lic opinion, however, demanded for the negro the 
ballot. On this point Phillips had educated the 
country, which now believed what he said : "The 
black man without the ballot, is the lamb given over 
to the wolf." ' Hence, a fifteenth amendment was 



» standard, vols, xxvii. and xxviii. ' Jb., voL xxvin., July 27th. 

3 Anti- Slavery Standard, vol. xxx.. No. 3. 



364 WENDEiJ. riiii.urs. 

mooted, to secure this essential safeguard of citizen 
ship. 

Wendell Phillips held himself in readiness to coun^ 
sel and assist resistance to tyrants not only at home 
but abroad. The island of Crete, anchored in the 
Mediterranean and steeped in classic memories, the 
storehouse whence the ancient Egyptians and Phceni- 
cians brought civilization into Europe, — had burst 
into rebellion against the '■' unspeakable Turk," and 
her people were engaged in an unequal struggle for 
liberty. Christian nations looked on in sympathy. 
A ladies' fair was held in Boston, in 1868, to raise 
money for the far-away heroes. Naturally, they 
turned to Mr. Phillips to plead their cause. Just as 
naturally he responded in a speech which sobbed 
with pathos while it thrilled. Perhaps the orator 
never spoke more beautifully ; certainly he never 
spoice more ineffectually ; for though the dollars 
called for were gotten, the crescent was soon set in 
triumph again above the cross.' 

As he was now recognized as the foremost speaker 
of English in the world, Mr'. Phillips was continuall}' 
appealed to for oratorical *' points." In response to 
such inquiries he was in the habit of recommending 
Holyoake's " Rudiments of Public Speaking" as 
holding the first place among all books on the sub- 
ject. He kept a copy al\va3"s at hand, which he had 
scribbled all over with his marginal notes. To a 
young collegian who had asked him qus3tioiiS con- 
cerning preparation for public speaking, he made 
the following reply, which is worthy of study as 
coming from a master : 



^ See the Boston dailies in_May for an account of the fair. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 365 

*' I think practice with all kinds of audiences the best of 
teachers. Think out your subject carefully. Read all you can 
relative to the themes you touch. Fill your mind ; and then 
talk simply and naturally. Forget altogether that you are to 
make a speech, or are making one. Absorb yourself into the 
idea that you are to strike a blow, carry out a purpose, effect an 
object, recommend a plan ; then, having forgotten yourself, you 
will be likelier to do your best. Study the class of books your 
mind likes. When you go outside this rule, study those which 
^ive you facts on your chosen topics and which you find most 
suggestive. 

" Remember to talk up to an audience, not down to it. The 
commonest audience can relish the best thing you can say if you 
^ay it properly. Be simple : be earnest." * 

This advice is stimulating". But after all, rules 
never made an orator ; any more than a knowledge 
of thorough-bass made Mozart, or skill in mixing 
colors made Raphael. It is as George William Cur- 
tis says : ." The secret of the rose's sweetness, of the 
sunset's glory — that is the secret of genius and elo- 
quence. " ^ 



' Quoted by Joseph Cook in his Monday lecture on Wendell Phil- 
lips, February 4th, 1884, and reported in New York Independent^ 
February 14th, 1884. 

* Curtis's " Oration on Wendell Phillips," p. 16. 



I 



11. 

10 ! TRIUMPHE ! 

Lyceum engagements absorbed the time of Mr 
Phillips during the season of 1868-69. The theme 
he preferred was the ballot for the black man, and, 
as a rule, on this he was heard. The outlook was 
now bright. In February, 1869, Congress resolved 
to formulate the Fifteenth Amendment. This meas- 
ure stirred the bitterness of race prejudice, awoke 
every Rip Van Winkle to protest, and provoked a 
last desperate outburst of profanity from the former 
slave-masters ; but received the enthusiastic sup- 
port of the Avise and good. Charles Sumner, hon- 
orabl}^ conspicuous in all the legislation which har- 
vested the results of the war, had charge of the 
amendment in the Senate. He blundered at a vital 
point — the Senate was about to reject it ; the quick- 
sighted and sharp-witted Phillips detected and 
pointed out the mistake ; Sumner rectified it ; and 
the amendment was saved.* 

On March 4th, 1869, ** Jefferson Davis" Johnson 
vanished — U. S. Grant appeared. Thus time did 
what the politicians failed to do, — turned out a traitor 
and installed a patriot. 

The next month, amid these hopeful signs for the 



* Oliver Johnson says he had this from an ex-governor, a United 
States Senator, and a Cabinet officer. Vide " Garrison and his 
Times," p. 441, 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 367 

negro, Mr. Phillips turned aside for a moment to 
advocate a kindred cause. With Julia Ward Howe, 
he went before the Legislature of Massachusetts to 
plead for female suffrage.^ During the war the ab- 
sorption of the country had been so utter that the 
women's movement could make no headway. 
" Never mind," said Mr. Phillips, " it is the negro's 
hour." The words lay and rankled in the memory 
of some of the ladies, who accused their champion 
of giving precedence to one reform over another — 
of preferring the negro to the ladies. Had the charge 
been true, it would have impeached both the justice 
and the gallantry of the alleged culprit. But he 
proved an alibi. In a communication to the Woman s 
Advocate^ he defined the meaning of the unobjection- 
able phrase, and stated his position : 

" I have always given, spoken, and printed for the cause, and 
am doing so now. When I said, in 1861, ' This is the negro's 
hour,' I meant in the sense of ripeness : as July is * the grass's 
hour,' and as October is ' the apple's hour.' " ^ 

In another article which appeared in the same 
journal, he defended his course in advocating the 
Fifteenth Amendment, even though it ignored female 
suffrage : 

" Every change large enough to serve as a point on which to 
rally the nation, should have a separate discussion, and be de- 
cided by itself. Mixing up separate issues is like good Davie 
Deans's attachment to the Scottish Covenant. From his sick 
pillow he asked if the doctor had subscribed the Covenant. 
* That's no matter now,' said his child. ' Indeed it is,* cried the 
old Covenanter ; * for if he has not, never a drop of his medicine 
shall go into the stomach of my father's son.' " ' 



* Vide Anti-Slavery Standard^ vol. xxix., April loth. 

* Woman^s Advocate y September, i86g. ^ Ih., July, i86g. 



368 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

He held, moreover, that woman suffrage would 
come, if at all, not by national action, but by State 
legislation — as would the abolition of slavery, had 
not the Rebellion armed the Union with the war 
power.* 

In April, also, a week after the plea ior female 
suffrage, the Agitator again addressed the Legisla- 
ture of his native State in behalf of labor reform ; 
his special demand being for the appointment of a 
Labor commission to examine into the condition of 
the working classes of the Commonwealth. This 
speech was able and triumphant. The commission 
was appointed, and inaugurated the vast and far- 
reaching agitation of the Labor question." Like the 
prophet he was, Mr. Phillips foresaw the speedy 
close of the Anti-Slavery epoch, and anticipated the 
next great issue. Close observers then forecast his 
future from his present course. 

April was a busy month for Mr. Phillips. In ad 
dition to the legislative exertions above mentioned, 
he turned aside to address a Sunday gathering in 
Horticultural Hall, in Boston, on a religious theme. 
" Christianity is a battle — not a dream," he said, and 
then proceeded to vindicate it against those who 
would make it a mere matter of ecclesiasticism, on 
the one hand, and against those who represented it 
as the essence of posture and imposture, on the other 
hand. Christianity he regarded as the spirit of 
heaven at work on earth, — as a divine influence em- 
bodied in human life, and set to right wrongs and 
save the lost. Christ he regarded as the Author and 



' Woman* s Advocate, July, 1S69. 

^ Vide Standard, vol. xxx., April 17th, 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 369 

Finisher of redemption — His career as the model of 
every worthy and noble life. As he contended so 
should we contend, aiming" to make God known to 
men. He considered this the best and most satis- 
factory of his utterances in this line, and gladly con- 
fessed his own indebtedness to the Nazarene for the 
knowledge of God and a disposition to serve his 
kind.* 

In May, 1869, the American Anti-Slavery Society 
met in New York City. The Fifteenth Amendment 
was in process of ratification by the States. Victory 
was in the air. The veterans were jubilant — but 
vigilant. The topic was prejudice of race. Freder- 
ick Douglass and Senator Henry Wilson were among 
the speakers. Mr. Phillips acknowledged that he 
had been mistaken in his estimate of President Grant, 
whose course thus far had been praiseworthy, and 
added : 

" I want a right hand stern as death, and a sword rough- 
ground, like those with which Wellington went into the battle 
of Waterloo, held over every Southern State to secure that peace 
which promotes industry." ^ 

The lecture season of 1869-70 Mr. Phillips spent 
as usual, mostly in the cars, g"oing to and from his 
Lyceum appointments. He thought he and Mr. 
John B. Gough could claim to be the great Ameri- 
can travellers. ** I know," said he, " every loco- 
motive, every conductor, and the exact depth of the 
mud in every road in the country." In one of his 
lectures he referred to the Garrison mob of 1835. 



' A synopsis of this important address may be found in the And' 
Slavery Standard, vol. xxx. , April 17th. 
* Vide And- Slavery Standard, vol. xxx., No. 3. 



370 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

The reference provoked Colonel Theodore Lyman, 
the son of the mayor who figured discreditably in 
the riot, to rush into print in defence of his father. 
The orator respected Colonel Lyman's filial feeling, 
but nevertheless vindicated the truth of history. 
After a vivid statement of the facts,* he said in his 
rejoinder : 

''Twenty years ago, I affirmed, 'The time will come when 
sons will deem it unkind to remind the world of acts their fathers 
now take pride in.' That hour has come. I refer to old shames, 
not to insult the dead, but to control the living. Evil-doers have 
one motive more to restrain them, if they can be made to feel 
that their children will blush for the names they inherit. I 
bring these things up to show that reformers have terrible 
memories ; and that even if base acts win office and plaudits to- 
day, the ears of the actor's children will tingle at the report of 
them half a century hence." ' 

March 30th, 1870, is an ever-memorable date. It 
was then that President Grant proclaimed the adop- 
tion of the Fifteenth Amendment, Avhich provided 
that neither the nation nor any of the States conv 
posing it should abridge the right of an}^ citizen to 
vote on account of race, color, or previous condition 
of servitude. The struggle was ended. Freedom 
had crowned her work. Mr. Phillips read the proc- 
lamation in Leroy, N. Y. Sitting down, he dashed 
off a few jubilant lines to his alter ego, the Rev. John 
T. Sargent, of Boston \ 

** Leroy, N. Y., March 30, 1870. 
* Dear John : Let me exchange congratulations with you. 



* Vide ante, p. 51. 

* Vide Boston Commonwealth, November 13th, l86g. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 3/1 

Our long work is sealed at last. The nation proclaims Equal 

Liberty. To-day is its real ' Birthday.' 

* lo I Triumphe ! * 

Thank God. 

•• Affectionately, 

'* Wendell Phillips. ** * 

Of course, he knew that legislation cannot bring 
in the millennium. Statutes never turn sinners into 
saints. Prejudice dies hard. It must be lived down 
and shamed out. A race, like an individual, has to 
earn respect. A student of history, he remembered 
how the adherents of the exiled Stuarts pledged the 
Pretender in secret bumpers in the Scotch Highlands 
and beyond the seas — how Jacobitism stained the 
pages of Sir Walter Scott a hundred years after the 
Revolution of 1688 ; and how the ton in the Fau- 
bourg St. Germain clung to the sentiment of roj^alty, 
and dreamed of the French lilies while living under 
the tricolor. No ; Mr. Phillips was aware that the 
negroes would have to face prejudice perhaps for 
generations, and would be dwarfed in their own esti- 
mation and in the feeling of the community by the 
associations of their servitude. The remedy for this 
could be found only in time and achievement. Mean- 
while it was much that the law was color-blind. The 
arena was now open. Manhood might attest itself. 

The mission of the American Anti-vSlavery Society 
was fulfilled. What remained save to meet once 
more, formally announce the consummation, and dis- 
band .^ On April 9th, 1870, the Abolitionists, with 
the smell of smoke on their garments, held their 
commemoration at Steinway Hall, in New York 



This letter is in MS, 



372 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

City. The attendance was immense, the rejoicing 
ecstatic. Mr. Phillips, as President of the Society, 
was in the chair. Letters were read from a host of 
coworkers, including Sumner, Colfax, Boutwell, 
Whittier, and Lydia Maria Child.' Lucretia Mott, 
O. B. Frothingham, Robert Purvis, Julia Ward 
Howe, John T. Sargent, and many others of the 
*' old guard," were grouped on the platform." The 
streets were alive with colored people, marching in 
vociferous procession. As Mr. Phillips rose to say 
the last word, he received the ovation of his life. 
He referred to it ever after as ample compensation 
for all his toils, and bore the memory of the meeting 
to the grave as the chief pleasure of his career. In 
speaking of what he owed the cause, he said: 

" It has taught me faith in human nature. When I read a 
sublime fact in Plutarch, of an unselfish deed in a line of poetry, 
or thrill beneath some heroic legend, it is no longer fairyland. 
I have seen it matched." ' 

In closing, he added : 

" We will not say ' Farewell,* but ' all hail.' Welcome, new 
duties ! We sheathe no sword. We only turn the front of the 
army upon a new foe." * 

At the business meeting w^hich followed, the So- 
ciety refused to die — it adjourned sine die.^ 

Thus, with a befitting celebration, and at the proper 
time, the American Anti-Slavery Society passed into 
histor3^ Had it dissolved earlier it would not have 
fulfilled its pledge. For what was its pledge ? It 
was to free the slave. But freedom is a comprehen- 
sive word. It includes not merely the having 



* Vide Anti-Slavery Standard, vol. xxx., April. ^ jb. " lb. *■ lb. « lb. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 373 

shackles struck from our wrists and ankles, but our 
possession of the rights and privileges enjoyed %y 
freemen — not only emancipation, but enfranchise- 
ment. Complete liberty was only just now attained. 

It was said by Mr. Garrison and the little band 
who withdrew with him, after the passage by Con- 
gress of the Thirteenth Amendment, that the rest 
could be gotten through other agencies. Perhaps 
so ; nevertheless what became of their pledge in that 
organization to contend for the freedom of the 
blacks ? Besides, by parity of reasoning, they might 
likewise have excused their desertion at any other 
hour after the grand political rally for freedom. The 
peculiar excellence of the American Anti-Slavery 
Society was that it conducted a moral agitation, — 
that it stood outside of sects and parties as their 
critic and inspirer, — that it held up, amid compro- 
mises and compromisers, the ideal of absolute jus- 
tice, — that it refused to be satisfied with anything 
else or less. This function was never more essential 
than during the four years from 1866 to 1870; and 
it was never more magnificently subserved. All 
honor to the faithful men and women who held to- 
gether not only with Canaan in sight, but until they 
were mustered out in the peace and plenty of the 
promised land. ** Wolfe died," wrote Sumner, ** in 
the arms of victory ; and such is the fortune of your 
noble society." * 

Of the personal services of Mr. Phillips during 
these years when the fruits of the war were to be 
secured, it is impossible to speak extravagantly. 



* Letter to the American Anti-Slavery Society, at this commemora' 
tivc meeting. Vide Standard^ vol. xxx., ApriL 



374 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

His position as President of the American Anti- 
Slavery Society gave him, what Mr. Garrison now 
lacked, — a distinctive platform. The former leader 
was lost in the crowd. The new chief stood out in 
clean-cut prominence. His speeches were events. 
He gave the country a succession of electric shocks. 
Injustice was stunned. Liberty was reanimated. 
He watched every move of the slippery gamesters 
at Washington with unflagging vigilance, criticising, 
suggesting, analyzing, insisting ; and by directing 
universal attention to the game, made them play fair 
and square. " More than to any r^,her, more than 
to all others," said Senator Hei. / Wilson, "the 
colored people owe it that they were not cheated 
out of their citizenship after emancipation, to Wen- 
dell Phillips."' 

The successful Abolitionist found it difficult to 
realize his victoiy. It seemed too good to be true. 
On May 4th, 1870, a meeting was held in the Tre- 
mont Temple, in Boston, at which he expressed this 
feeling and announced his conviction that he was not 
dreaming. He was asked to introduce the new 
colored senator from Mississippi, Mr. Revels, who 
now occupied the seat of Jefferson Davis ! In ful- 
filling the grateful dutv, he said : 

" You remember when we were children and read the ' Ara- 
bian Nights,' that after some gorgeous description of crests of 
light and cimeters of gold and crowns of gems, the Caliph 
clapped his hands and the dream burst — we were sitting on the 
cold ground. I felt, as I sat behind Senator Revels, like clap- 
ping my hands to see whether the scene would change — whether 
it was all a fairy mistake. I could hardly realize that fifteen 
hundred people had come to Tremont Temple to see a senator of 



* Letter to Charles Sumoer, April 19th, 1870 (ms.) 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 375 

that race so long victimized. I was in Western New York when 
the proclamation of the ratified Fifteenth Amendment came at 
night. With the gray light of the morning I sprang to my feet 
to see if there was really a proclamation. I should like to feel 
the senator to assure myself that he is flesh and blood. 

•* At the Lovejoy Meeting, in 1837, the Attorney-General of 
Massachusetts said the idea of taking the chains off these negroes 
was like letting loose the hyenas. Gentlemen of Boston, I intro- 
duce to you a hyena ! Well, then, later Senator Toombs told us 
that, if we ever dared to fire a gun, he would call the roll of his 
slaves on Bunker Hill. Behold the first one that has answered 
— a senator of the United States." ^ 

It was in 1870, too, that Italy realized the dream 
of centuries and achieved her unity, with Rome as 
the head of the reanimated body-politic. The cos- 
mopolitan soul of Wendell Phillips was almost as 
much gratified by the success of the Italian liber- 
ators as he was by the crowning of his own work. 
When a warm invitation reached him to celebrate 
the auspicious occurrence with the Italians in New 
York City, he made an effort to attend ; but that 
failing, he wrote a jubilant letter which was read 
amid loud plaudits : 

" Boston, October 27. 

" At all times, the fate of Rome has been of utmost interest. 
Every scholar, every lover of art, every student of jurisprudence, 
every apostle of liberty, remembers that, after leading the old 
world, Rome guarded its treasures across the gulf of the middle 
and troubled ages. To every lover of the past and every ser- 
vant of the future it seems natural to call Italy * My Country,' 
Three centuries ago she inspired modern civilization. In this 
generation the battle for European liberty has centred on 
Rome. At last she opens her gates to the nineteenth century. 

*' Congratulations to Garibaldi and Mazzini, They behold the 



* Fide Moncure D. Conway's article on Wendell Phillips, in the 
fortnightly Review^ London, vol. viii., p. 64 sq. 



3/6 WENDELT. PHILLIPS. 

morning. What will the noon be ? Nothing less than Europe 
a brotherhood of republics, 

'* Kings, like other spectres, will vanish at the cock-crowing. 

" May the glory and service of Rome in this new epoch tran- 
scend her * trebly hundred triumphs * and all the splendor of the 

age of Leo. 

" Fraternally, 

'* Wendell Phillips." * 

The friends of Mr. Phillips had long desired him 
to sit for a picture or bust. He disliked anything 
of the sort ; but at last consented to permit Mr. 
Martin Milmore, a sculptor who had a genius for 
portraiture, to reproduce his features. The sculptor 
was over a year in getting the mouth in satisfactory 
shape. One cold winter night he saw in the Boston 
Transcript that Mr. Phillips was to speak that even- 
ing in Chelsea. He went over without taking time 
to go home for an ovnrcoat. As he sat in the hall 
listening to the orator what was missing came to 
him in a flash. He returned to his studio at eleven 
o'clock, uncovered the plaster, and worked away 
until past midnight. When he met Mr. Phillips the 
next day and showed him the result, he said : " You 
may consider your work as done." This, also, was 
in 1870. Mr. Milmore's bust is a beautiful work, 
and his cJief d'ceuvre. **' 1 put my soul in it," re- 
marked the sculptor, *' but, after all, how far short of 
the original it is !" 



* Vide The National Standard, New York, November X2th, 1870. 



III. 

** NEW OCCASIONS TEACH NEW DUTIES.'* 

At the date when the Fifteenth Amendment was 
adopted (the hammer which drove the last nail into 
the coffin of negro slavery), Wendell Phillips was in 
his sixtieth year. Thus, he was still in the prime of 
life. His correct habits had preserved his bodily 
and mental powers in full vigor. His eye was as 
bright and sharp, his endurance as great, his nerves 
as steady, his thinking as sinewy, his speech as 
classic as in early manhood. Time had only ripened 
and mellowed without impairing his faculties at any 
point. 

It might be thought that his hand-to-hand grapple 
with slavery, thirty-three years long, now entitled 
him to a victor's repose. His old friend, Edmund 
Quincy, acting on tjiis principle, had reverted to the 
life of elegant leisure from which the Anti-Slavery 
movement had wrenched him. Mr. Garrison, rest- 
ing under the approaches of old age, appeared in 
public nowadays only as impulse stirred him, and 
while continuing to watch the interests of the freed- 
men, and to advocate the causes with which he had 
identified himself in the past, espoused no new re- 
forms. Mr. Phillips disdained the conservatism 
which usually coats men with moss in the afternoon 
of life. This was partly temperamental, — the result 
of robust health, but came more from principle. He 



3/8 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

felt this life to be a battle-field, not a couch. He 
loved to repeat the words which Tocqueville uttered 
when Sumner left him in Europe on the eve of re- 
turning home, and which he exemplified : " Life is 
neither a pain nor a pleasure, but serious business, 
which it is our duty to carry through and conclude 
with honor." ' Accordingly, he said gayly to a 
friend, " Now that the field is won, do you sit by 
the camp-fire, but I will put out into the under- 
brush." ' 

Mr. Phillips meant w4iat he said. He " put out." 
Retaining all his former interest in the affairs oi 
his old clients, the negro and woman, he took 
on new interests as fast as these disclosed them- 
selves. Current issues had a fascination for him, 
— especially if they had any moral bearing. He de- 
lighted, too, in keeping ahead of the times, and in 
beckoning the age up and on. The temperance 
question had from the start a warm place in his heart 
and a large place in his speech. For many years he 
had been a total abstainer. His own practice in this 
regard he urged others to adopt. He also favored 
and never tired of publicly pleading for prohibition 
as the only adequate remedy for tipsy streets. Now 
that he was measurably free from the entanglements 
arising from slavery, he gave this question ever- 
increasing prominence on the platform. 

Another issue which at once enlisted his enthusi- 
astic co-operation was Labor Reform. This, slavery 
being abolished, was the next inevitable battle. 
While every workingman was degraded in the en- 



' Phillips's article on Sumner in Johnson' s Cyclopctdia, 
'^ Curtis's " Oration on Wendell Phillips," p. 31. 



slavement of the colored laborers of the South, it 
was necessary to secure enfranchisement there before 
contending for enlarged opportunities everywhere. 
The law must acknowledge manhood before it could 
logically concede rights and privileges which pre- 
suppose manhood. With this accomplished, the de- 
mand for better wages, easier hours, more comforts, 
and the erection of legal barriers against the greed 
of employers in behalf of employes, — followed, as the 
day follows the night. 

Many of the old Abolitionists broke down at this 
point. They wSaw plainly enough the enormity of 
negro slavery. They could not see the enormity of 
wage-slavery. That guilt was the wickedness of the 
slave owners. This guilt was their wickedness — • 
would affect, if they acknowledged it, their divi- 
dends, impeach their business habits, invade their 
relations to their "hands." The wealthier among 
them realized the immeasurable difference between 
nienni and tiitim. When their former coadjutor began 
to apply the principles of the Anti-Slavery re- 
form to this correlated movement, they balked, 
and accused him of " preaching crusades on diffi- 
cult problems which he had never seriously stud- 
ied." 

The truth is, Mr. Phillips began to study the labor 
question at the moment when he took up Anti- 
Slavery. The one necessitated the other. Papers 
found in his library and bearing his notes, made cer- 
tainly as far back as 1840, prove it. Among these is 
one entitled " The Slavery of Poverty," published 
fifty years ago — wonderfully keen and suggestive, 
and carried on in a dialogue between a converted 
slave-holder and an Abolitionist, which is covered 



380 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

with the orator's comments.* He followed nis prin- 
ciples wherev^er they took him. A logical conclusion 
had no terrors for him. In England there is an inn 
called " The Six Alls." On the sign that hangs m 
front stands the Queen, in her robes of state, and 
she says: "I rule all." On her right hand is a 
priest, who says : "I pray for all. " Below him is 
a soldier, who says : " I fight for all." On her left 
hand is a lawyer, who says : " I plead for all." Be- 
low him is a doctor, who says : " I cure all." At 
the very bottom stands a workingman in his shirt- 
sleeves, grimy, beaded with perspiration, and he 
says : ** I pay for all !" Mr. Phillips's idea w^as that, 
since the workingman paid for all, he was entitled to 
consideration. What created capital ? Labor. Very 
well ; then give labor its fair proportion of profits. 
Make legislation guarantee this. 

The workingmen received their renowned ally 
with enthusiasm. They made him their standard- 
bearer, and fell into rank under the banner he lifted. 
They were now organized in Massachusetts as a 
separate political party (the Labor party), and on 
September 8th, 1870, their State Convention nomi- 
nated Mr. Phillips for Governor. Four days earlier, 
the Prohibition Convention conferred on him the 
same honor. He fully represented both ideas, and 
reluctantly consented to enter the canvass as the ex- 
ponent of both. He knew there was no chance for 
his election. Had there been, he would not have ac- 
cepted the joint nominations. The canvass would 



' This curious pamphlet now rests in the Boston Public Library, 
among the books, etc., which Mr. Phillips gave that institution a year 
or two before his death- 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 38 I 

be simply a protest and an education — agitation in 
the shape of politics. 

At the Labor Convention the orator presided. 
He drew up and read the platform, which is sub- 
joined as his " confession of faith." 

" We affirm, as a fundamental principle, that labor, the 
creator of wealth, is entitled to all it creates. 

" Affirming this, we avow ourselves willing to accept the final 
results of the operation of a principle so radical, such as the 
overthrow of the whole profit-making system, the extinction of 
all monopolies, the abolition of privileged classes, universal 
education and fraternity, perfect freedom of exchange, and, best 
and grandest of all, the final obliteration of that foul stigma 
upon our so-called Christian civilization, the poverty of the 
masses. Holding principles as radical as these, and having 
before our minds an ideal condition so noble, we are still aware 
that our goal cannot be reached at a single leap. We take into 
account the ignorance, selfishness, prejudice, corruption, and 
demoralization of the leaders of the people, and, to a large ex- 
tent, of the people themselves ; but still, we demand ihat some 
steps be taken in this direction : therefore, — 

" Resolved, That we declare war with the wages system, 
which demoralizes alike the hirer and the hired, cheats both, 
and enslaves the workingman ; war with the present system of 
finance, which robs labor, and gorges capital, makes the rich 
richer, and the poor poorer, and turns a republic into an aris- 
tocracy of capital ; war with these lavish grants of the public 
lands to speculating companies, and, whenever in power, we 
pledge ourselves to use every just and legal means to resume all 
such grants heretofore made ; war with the system of enriching 
capitalists by the creation and increase of public interest-bear- 
ing debts. We demand that every facility, and all encourage- 
ment, shall be given by law to co-operation in all branches of 
industry and trade, and that the same aid be given to co-opera- 
tive efforts that has heretofore been given to railroads and other 
enterprises. We demand a ten-hour day for factory-work as a 
first step, and that eight hours be the working-day of all persons 
thus employed hereafter. We demand, that, whenever women 



382 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

are employed at public expense to do the same kind and amount 
of work as men perform, they shall receive the same wages. 
We demand that all public debts be paid at once in accordance 
with the terms of the contract, and that no more debts be cre- 
ated. Viewing the contract importation of coolies as only an- 
other form of the slave-trade, we demand that all contracts made 
relative thereto be void in this country, and that no public ship, 
and no steamship which receives public subsidy, shall aid in 
such importation." ^ 

This platform he proceeded to explain and enforce 
in an able speech, from which we quote a single 
paragraph : 

" If any man asks me, therefore, what value I place upon this 
movement, 1 should say it is, first, the movement of humanity to 
protect itself ; and, secondly, it is the insurance of peace ; and, 
thirdly, it is a guarantee against the destruction of capital. We 
all know that there is no war between labor and capital, — that 
they are partners, not enemies, — and their true interests on any 
iust basis are identical. And this movement of ballot-bearing 
millions is to avoid the unnecessary waste of capital. 

" Well, gentlemen, I say so much to justify myself in styling 
this the grandest and most comprehensive movement of the 
age." {Applause^ "^ 

A few days later Mr. Phillips formally accepted 
the Labor and Prohibition nominations in letters 
which are worthy of attention. The first was ad- 
dressed to the Labor Reformers : 

" Boston, September 12, 1870. 
Charles Cowley, Esq. 

" Dear Sir : You send me notice that the Labor Reform 
party of Massachusetts, which met at Worcester on the 8th inst.. 
has done me the honor to nominate me for the office of Governor. 

" I have n-. wish to be Governor of Massachusetts : and, flat- 



» Vide " The Labor Question," by Wendell Phillips. Published 
by Lee & Shepard, Boston. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 383 

tering as is this confidence, I thoroughly dislike to have my 
name drawn into party politics ; for I belong to no political 
party. But I see nothing in your platform from which I dissent, 
and the struggle which underlies your movement kas my fullest 
and heartiest sympathy. 

" You are kind enough to say that my life has been given to 
the cause of workingmen. The adoption of the Fifteenth 
Amendment sweeps in all races, and gives the cause a wider 
range. Capital and labor — partners, not enemies— stand face 
to face, in order to bring about a fair division of the common 
profits. I am fully convinced, that hitherto legislation hsCs 
leaned too much — leaned most unfairly — to the side of capital. 
Hereafter it should be impartial. Law should do all it can to 
give the masses more leisure, a more complete education, better 
opportunities, and a fair share of profits. It is a shame to our 
Christianity and civilization, for our social system to provide and 
expect that one man at seventy years of age shall be lord of 
many thousands of dollars, while hundreds of other men, who 
have made as good use of their talents and opportunities, lean 
upon charity for their daily bread. Of course, there must be 
inequalities. But the best minds and hearts of the land should 
give themselves to the work of changing this gross injustice, 
this appalling inequality. I feel sure that the readiest way to 
turn public thought and effort into this channel, is for the work- 
ingmen to organize a political party. No social question ever 
gets fearlessly treated here till we make politics turn on it. The 
real American college is the ballot-box. On questions like 
these, a political party is the surest and readiest, if not the only, 
way to stir discussion, and secure improvement. 

"If my name will strengthen your movement, you are wel- 
come to it. 

'* Allow me to add, that, though we work for a large vote, we 
should not be discouraged by a small one. 

" Yours truly, 

" Wendell Phillips." ' 

The second letter was an acceptance of the Pro- 
hibition nomination, and was, in part, as follows : 

* Vide Boston daily papers of September 13th, 1870. 



384 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

*' Boston, September 13, lo/O. 

" Dear Sir : I have no wish to be Governor of Massachu- 
setts. But, to rally a political party, disinterested men must 
give years to the work of enlightening the public mind, and 
organizing their ranks. In that work I am willing to be used. 
My inclinations would induce me to decline the nomination ; 
but I dare not do so in view of the vast interests involved in your 
movement, which call on each one of us to make every sacrifice 
to insure its success. 

." No one supposes that law can make men temperate. Occa- 
sionally some sot betrays the average level of liquor intelligence, 
by fancying that to be our belief and plan. Temperance men, 
on the contrary, have always known and argued that we must 
trust to argument, example, social influence, and religious prin- 
ciple, to make men temperate. But law can shut up those bars 
and dram-shops which facilitate and feed intemperance, which 
double our taxes, make our streets unsafe for men of feeble reso- 
lution, treble the peril to property and life, and make the masses 
tools in the hands of designing men to undermine and cripple 
law. 

"The use oi intoxicating liquors rests with each man's dis- 
cretion. But the trade in them comes clearly within the control 
of law. Many considerations — and among them the safety and 
success of republican institutions — bid us put forth the full power 
of the law to shut up dram-shops. We have never yet ruled a 
great city on the principle of self-government. Republican in- 
stitutions, undermined by intemperance, are obliged to confess 
that they have never governed a great city here, on the basis of 
universal suffrage, in such way as to preserve order, protect life, 
and secure free speech. 

" New York, ruled by drunkards, is proof of the despotism of 
the dram-shop. Men whom murderers serve that they may 
escape, and because they have escaped the gallows, rule that 
city. The ribald crew which holds them up could neither stifle 
its own conscience, nor rally its retinue, but for the help of the 
grog-shop. A like testimony comes from the history of our other 
great cities. State laws are defied in their streets ; and by 
means of the dram-shop, and the gilded saloons of fashionable 
hotels, their ballot-box is in the hands of the criminal classes, — 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 385 

of men who avowedly and systematically defy the laws. Indeed, 
this is the case in Boston. 

" Since your nomination was made, I have been honored with 
another by the workingmen of Massachusetts. Their cause is 
a powerful ally of yours. Whatever lifts the masses to better 
education and more self-control, and secures them their full 
rights, helps the temperance cause. Indeed, theirs is a radical 
movement, broad as the human race, and properly includes 
everything that elevates man, and subjects passion and tempta- 
tion to reason and principle. 

" But the only bulwark against the dangers of intemperance 
is prohibition. More than thirty years of experience have con- 
vinced me, and as wide an experience has taught you, that this 
can only be secured by means of a distinct political organiza- 
tion. Thoroughly as I dislike to have my name used in a politi- 
cal canvass, I do not feel that I have the right to refuse its use 
if you think it will strengthen your party. 

" I am, very respectfully yours, 

" Wendell Phillips." * 

In the ensuing election, the Labor and Prohibition 
candidate received over twenty thousand votes. 
Thus both questions were launched and afloat in the 
Old Bay State. 



' Vide Boston daily papers of September 14th, 1870. 



IV. 

LIVING ISSUES. 

It is not enough to be ready to go where duty 
calls. A man should stay around where he can hear 
the call. In morals, practice is the test of con- 
science. There never lived one who put his con- 
duct closer to his principles, whose ear was keener to 
hear, and whose hand was readier to do, than Wen- 
dell Phillips. This was his favorite text, when his 
friends expostulated with him, and urged him to 
tone down his absolute truth : " Whether it be right 
in the sight of God to hearken unto you rather than 
unto God, judge ye." He never scrupled to break 
a friendship, and he constantly did it when it would 
have dissuaded him from obeying a call to announce 
a right and denounce a wrong. It was both amusing 
and painful to observe how former adherents fell 
away from him because he believed in Benjamin 
F. Butler. 

This gentleman was the dt^U noir of INIassachusetts 
respectability. Ks the old Federalists were wont 
to frighten their children to sleep by crooning 
Thomas Jefferson, so Beacon Hill and State Street, 
in Boston, made a bugaboo of Butler, in the de- 
cade between 1870 and 1880. The man in the pl.^r 
said to his rival : " Sir, your conduct, past, presen ' 
and future, is excessively disagreeable !" so the kid- 
gloved and cologne- water magnates of the Bay State 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 387 

could see nothing to commend in what the noted 
attorney had done, was doing, or proposed to do. 

Mr. Phillips had known Butler from a boy. His 
Pro-Slavery course before the war was hateful. His 
war record, especially in his civil acts, was grand. 
By coining the word " contraband," he had practi- 
cally emancipated thousands of slaves before Lincoln 
dreamed of emancipation. By his administration in 
New Orleans he had taught the Crescent City both 
manners and morals. And now he had joined and 
was serving the Labor movement, Avhich his un- 
rivalled executive ability promised to organize, and 
his leadership of the bar gave him the means of 
legally intrenching. Himself a man of nerve, he ad- 
mired the General's pluck, dash, vigor. The two 
went into partnership on purpose to rattle the dry 
bones in Massachusetts. They did it. Under their 
manipulation, very corpses Avere galvanized into the 
semblance of life. 

Mr. Garrison frowned and drew away. Ralph 
Waldo Emerson, who had admired Mr. Phillips for 
thirty years, no longer wished to see him in Con- 
cord. Strange ! Whether right or wrong regard- 
ing Butler, no one doubted the honesty of the ora- 
tor's attachment to him. Yet these excellent men 
broke the friendship of a lifetime on a point of dis- 
agreement in judgment. The advocate of freedom, 
who had claimed and practised the largest liberty 
of expression and association for himself ; and the 
advocate of toleration, who had impeached the intol- 

ance of New England, — both of them not only dis-- 
ountenanced (which they might have done without 
inconsistency), but for awhile actually cut their old- 
time colleague. How little the great are ! How 



388 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

narrow the broad ! Few of us ever discover bigots 
among those who agree with us. On his part, Phil- 
lips, grander than either, went on loving them — and 
held on in his course without swerving a hair's 
breadth. 

He shocked and frightened upper-tendom by an- 
nouncing' the gubernatorial candidature of General 
Butler six months in advance of the occurrence. 
And he foretold that he would run on a mixed Re- 
publican and Labor platform. The prediction was 
fulfilled. The campaign was one of the most excit- 
ing ever known. Phillips spoke often and power- 
fully, dwelling upon his favorite theme (" the 
twins," he called them). Labor and Temperance ; 
his most notable utterance being at a vast assemblage 
" of all parties" on Salisbury Beach, with the Atlan- 
tic for a background, a September sky for a sound- 
ing-board, and 1 87 1 for a punctuation mark. Touch- 
ing on Labor, he said : 

" The great question of the future is money against legisla- 
tion. My friends, you and 1 shall be in our graves long before 
that battle is ended ; and, unless our children have more pa- 
tience and courage than saved this country from slavery, republi- 
can institutions will go dov^n before moneyed corporations. 
Rich men die ; but banks are immortal, and railroad corpora- 
tions never have any diseases. In the long run with the legis- 
latures, they are sure to win." ^ 

Referring to Butler, he confessed that the General 
" had done many things he would have asked him 
to do differently," and added : 

" But I will tell you a secret, friends. If I were Pope to-day, 
there is not a man among all the candidates, Butler included, 



^ To a Tribune " inteiviewer'' in the sunnmer of 1871, 
' Boston daily papers of September 14th, 1871. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 389 

whom I would make a saint of, — not one. The difficulty is, 
saints do not come very often ; and, when they do come, it is 
♦.he hardest thing in the world to get them into politics. I don't 
believe, that if you could import a saint, brand-new and spot- 
less, from heaven, that he could get a majority in the State of 
Massachusetts for any office that has a salary." ' 

The contest was for the Republican nomination, 
which another candidate (Washburn) finally got ; 
but only after Phillips and Butler had shaken the 
State as the angels shook the sheet in the New Testa- 
ment. 

A month after the Republican Convention which 
threw Butler overboard (October 31st, 1871), Mr. 
Phillips delivered in the Music Hall, Boston, the 
most elaborate of all his Labor speeches. Let us read 
a few passages. In opening, he painted the danger 
as lying in incorporated wealth : 

" Our fathers, when they forbade entail and provided for the 
distribution of estates, thought they had erected a barrier against 
the money power that ruled England. They forgot that money 
could combine ; that a moneyed corporation is like the papacy, 
a succession of persons with a unity of purpose. Now, as the 
land of England in the hands of thirty thousand land- owning 
families has ruled it for six hundred years, so the corporations 
of America mean to govern ; and unless some power more radi- 
cal than ordinary politics is found, will govern inevitably. The 
survival of republican institutions here depends upon a success- 
ful resistance of this tendency. The only hope of any effectual 
grapple with the danger lies in rousing the masses, whose inter- 
ests lie permanently in the opposite direction." " 

Next the orator passed to answer certain critic 
cisms : 



* Boston daily papers of September 14th, 1871. 

* "The Labor Question," by Wendell Phillips, published by Lee 
& Shepard, Boston, p, 13. 



390 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

" We are asked, Why hurry into politics ? We see the bene- 
fit of going into politics. If we had not rushed into politics, had 
not taKen Massachusetts by the four corners and shaken her, 
you never would have written your criticisms. We rush into 
politics because politics is the safety-valve. We could discuss 
as well as you if you would only give us bread and houses, fair 
pay and leisure, and opportunities to travel : we could sit and 
discuss the question for the next fifty years. It's a very easy 
thing to discuss, for a gentleman in his study, with no anxiety 
about to-morrow. Why, the ladies and gentlemen of the reign 
of Louis XV. and Louis XVI., in France, seated in gilded 
saloons and on Persian carpets, surrounded with luxury, with 
the products of India and the curious manufactures of ingenious 
Lyons and Rheims, discussed the rights of man, and balanced 
them in dainty phrases, and expressed them in such quaint 
generalizations that Jefferson borrowed the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence from their hands. There they sat, balancing and dis- 
cussing sweetly, making out new theories, and daily erecting a 
splendid architecture of debate, till the angry crowd broke open 
the doors, and ended the discussion in blood. They waited too 
long, discussed about half a century too long. You see, discus- 
sion is very good when a man has bread to eat, and his children 
all portioned off, and his daughters married, and his house fur- 
nished and paid for, and his will made ; but discussion is very 
bad when 

..." * Ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers ! 
Ere the sorrow comes with years ; ' 

discussion is bad when a class bends under actual oppression. 
We want immediate action," i 

Another criticism touched the use of the v\'ord 
labor. 

" All men labor. Rufus Choate and Daniel Webster labor, 
say the critics. Every man who reads of the Labor question 
knows that it means the movement of the men that earn their 
living with their hands ; that are employed, and paid wages j 



The Labor Question," pp. 14, 15. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 39' 

are gathered under roofs of factories, sent out on farms, sent 
out on ships, gathered on the walls. In popular acceptat.on, the 
working cla s^ means the men that work with the>r hands, or 
Tages so many hours a day, employed by great cap.ta hsts ; 
thafwork for everybody else. Why do we move for th.s class 
'why • asks a critic, ' don't you move for all workmgmen ? 
B;cau e, while Daniel Webster gets forty thousand del ars fo 
areuing the Mexican claims, there is no need of anybody s 
n ov"ng for him. While Rufus Choate gets five thousand dollars 
for making one argument to a jury, there is no need of movtng 
: Tm orfor the' men that work with their brains, -that do 
i°ghVJiscipUned and skilled labor, invent, and wr.te book ^ 
The reason why the Labor movement confines Uself to a stngle 
class is because that class of work does not get pa.d, does not 
get protection. Mental labor is adequately paid and more than 
Adequately protected. It can shift its channels : U can vary 
According to the supply and demand. If a man fads as a m.n- 
tster thy, he becomes'a railway conductor. If that doesn't suU 
Z he turns out, and becomes the agent of an tnsurance-office 
,f that doesn't suit, he goes West, and becomes governor o a 
Territory. And if he finds himself mcapable of euh o these 
positions, he comes home, and gets to be a o; X ed'tor. He 
varies his occupation as he pleases, and ^oesn t need p otec 
tion But the great mass, chained to a trade, doorned to be 
ground up in the mill of supply and demand, that work so many 
hours a day, and must run in the great ruts of bus,ness,-they 
are the men whose inadequate protection, whose unfajr share of 
the general product, claims a movement in their behalf. 
He thus describes his ideal : 

•■ My ideal of civilization is a very high one ; b"''he approach 
,0 it is a New England town of some two thousand inhabitants, 
wi h no rich man and no poor man in it, all mingling in the 
same society, every child at the same school no POor ho-e, no 
beggar, opportunities equal, nobody so proud as to stand aloof, 
nobody so humble as to be shut out." 

With reference to a remedy, he thought graded 
taxation would be helpful. 

' " The Labor Question," pp. i6. '■I- 



392 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

" The labor of yesterdaj', capital, is protected sacredly. Not 
so the labor of to-day. The labor ot yesterday gets twice the 
protection and twice the pay that the labor of to-day gets. Why 
is it not entitled to an equal share ? 

" Are you quite certain that capital — the child of artificial 
laws, the product of society, the mere growth of social life — has 
a right to only an equal burden with labor, the living spring ? 
We doubt it so much that we think we have invented a way to 
defeat the Pennsylvania Central. We think we have devised a 
little plan — Abraham Lincoln used to have a little story — by 
which we will save the Congress of the nation from the moneyed 
corporations of the State. When we get into power, there is 
one thing we mean to do. If a man owns a single house, we 
will tax him one hundred dollars. If he owns ten houses of like 
value, we won't tax him one thousand dollars, but two thousand 
dollars. If he owns a hundred houses, we won't tax him ten 
thousand dollars, but sixty thousand dollars ; and the richer a 
man grows, the bigger his tax, so that when he is worth forty 
million dollars he shall not have more than twenty thousand dol- 
lars a year to live on. We'll double and treble and quintuple and 
sextuple and increase tenfold the taxes, till Stewart out of his 
uncounted millions, and the Pennsylvania Central out of its 
measureless income, shall not have anything more than a mod- 
erate lodging and an honest table. The corporations we would 
have are those of associated labor and capital, — co-operation." ' 

Mr. Phillips repeated the substance of this speech 
in Steinway Hall, New York, on December 7th, 
1 87 1, and at various other places and times during 
that winter. Indeed, he intermingled Temperance 
and Labor in his Lyceum work now, as he had Anti- 
Slavery in former times. And outside of the 
Lyceum, on whatever platform, he gladly stood to 
plead for the lelief of poverty. Thus, he addressed 
the International Grand Lodge of St. Crispin in 
April, 1872, in a speech only second in importance 



The Labor Question," p. 23. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 393 

to the Music Hall speech above mentioned. From 
this, also, we extract a passage or two, important as 
showing his position and disclosing his methods of 
treatment : 

" Let me tell you why I am interested in the Labor question. 
Not simply because of the long hours of labor ; not simply 
because of a specific oppression of a class. I sympathize with 
the sufferers ; I am ready to fight on their side. But 1 look out 
upon Christendom, with its three hundred millions of people ; 
and I see, that, out of this number of people, one hundred mill- 
ions never had enough to eat. Physiologists tell us that this 
body of ours, unless it is properly fed, properly developed, and 
carefully nourished, does no justice to the brain. You cannot 
make a bright or good man in a starved body ; and so this one 
third of the inhabitants of Christendom, who have never had 
food enough, can never be what they should be. Now, I say 
that the social civilization which condemns every third man in it 
to be below the average in the nourishment God prepared for 
him, did not come from above : it came from below ; and, the 
sooner it goes down the better. Come on this side of the ocean. 
You will find forty millions of people, and I suppose they are in 
the highest state of civilization ; and yet it is not too much to 
say, that, out of that forty millions, there are ten millions, at 
least, who get up in the morning and go to bed at night, and 
spend all the day in the mere effort to get bread enough to live. 
They have not elasticity enough left to do anything in the way 
of intellectual or moral progress. 

'* I take, for instance, one of the manufacturing valleys of 
Connecticut. If you get into the cars there at 6.30 o'clock in the 
morning, as I have done, you will find, getting in at every little 
station, a score or more of laboring men and women, with their 
dinner in a pail ; and they get out at some factory that is already 
lighted up. Go down the same valley about 7.30 in the evening, 
and you will again see them going home. They must have got 
up about 5.30 ; they are at their work until nigh upon eight 
o'clock. There is a good, solid fourteen hours. Now, there 
will be a strong, substantial man, like Cobbett, who will sit up 
nights studying, and who will be a scholar at last among them, 
perhaps ; but he is an exception. The average man, when he 



394 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

gets home at night, does not care to read an article from the 
North Americafi, nor a long speech from Charles Sumner. 
No ; if he can't have a good story, and a warm supper, and a 
glass of grog, perhaps, he goes off to bed. Now, I say that the 
civilization that has produced this state of things in nearly the 
hundredth year of the American Republic did not come from 
above. 

*' I believe in the temperance movement. I am a temperance 
man of nearly forty years' standing ; and I think it one of the 
grandest things in the world, because it holds the basis of selt- 
control. Intemperance is the cause of poverty, I know ; but 
there is another side to that : poverty is the cause of intemper- 
ance. Crowd a man with fourteen hours* work a day, and you 
crowd him down to a mere animal life. You have eclipsed his 
aspirations, dulled his tastes, stunted his intellect, and made 
him a mere tool, to work fourteen hours, and catch a thought in 
the interval ; and, while a man in a hundred will rise to be a 
genius, ninety-nine will cower down under the circumstances. 
Now, I can tell you a fact. In London, the other day, it was 
found that one club of gentlemen, a thousand strong, spent 
twenty thousand dollars at the club-house during the year for 
drink. Well, I would allow them twenty thousand dollars more 
at home for liquor, making in all forty thousand dollars a year. 
These men were all men of education and leisure : they had 
books and paintings, opera, race-course, and regatta. A thou- 
sand men down in Portsmouth in a ship-yard, working under a 
boss, spent at the grog-shops of the place, in that year, eighty 
thousand dollars, — double that of their rich brethren. What is 
the explanation of such a fact as that 1 Why, the club-man had 
a circle of pleasures and of company : the operative, after he 
had worked fourteen hours, had nothing to look forward to but 
his grog. 

" That is why I say, lift a man, give him life, let him work 
eight hours a day, give him the school, develop his taste for 
music, give him a garden, give him beautiful things to s.ee, and 
good books to read, and you will starve out those lower appe- 
tites. Give a man a chance to earn a good living, and you may 
save his life. So it is with women in prostitution. Poverty is 
the road to it : it is this that makes them the prey of the wealth 
and the leisure of another class. Give a hundred men in this 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 59^ 

country good wages and eight hours' work, and ninety-nine will 
disdain to steal. Give a hundred women a good chance to get 
a good living, and ninety-nine of them will disdain to barter 
their virtue for gold. You will find in our criminal institutions 
to-day a great many men with big brains, who ought to have 
risen in the world, — perhaps gone to Congress. You may laugh, 
but I tell you the biggest brains don't go to Congress Now. 
take a hundred criminals : ten of them will be smart men ; but 
take the remainder, and eighty of them are below the average, 
body and mind : they were, as Charles Lamb said, * Never 
brought up ; they were dragged up.' They never had any fair 
chance : they were starved in body and mind. Now, just so 
long as you hold two thirds of this nation on such a narrow, 
superficial line, you feed the criminal classes." ^ 

He urged upon workingmen the vital importance 
of organization and said ; 

" Now, let me tell you where the great weakness of an asso- 
ciation of workingmen is. It is that it cannot wait. It does 
not know where to get its food for next week. If it is kept idle 
for ten days, the funds of the society are exhausted. Capital 
can fold its arms, and wait six months ; it can wait a year. It 
will be poorer, but it does not get to the bottom of the purse. 
It can afford to wait ; it can tire you out, and starve you out. 
And what is there against that immense preponderance of power 
on the part of capital ? Simply organization. That makes the 
wealth of all the wealth of every one. So I welcome organi- 
zation. I do not care whether it calls itself trades-union, Cris- 
pin, international, or commune : anything that masses up a unit 
in order that they may put in a united force to face the organi- 
zation of capital, anything that does that, I say Amen to it. One 
hundred thousand men ! It is an immense army. I do not care 
whether it considers chiefly the industrial or the political ques- 
tions ; it can control the nation if it is in earnest. The reason 
why the Abolitionists brought the nation down to fighting their 
battle is that they were really in earnest, knew what they wanted, 
and were determined to have it. Therefore they got it. The 
leading statesmen and orators of the day said they would never 



1 *' Labor Question," pp. 29-32. 



39^ WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

nrge Abolition ; but a determined man in a printing-office said 
that they should, and — they did it, 

" And so it is with this question exactly. Brains govern this 
country ; and I hope to God the time will never come when 
brains won't govern it, for they ought to. And the way in 
which you can compel the brains to listen and to attend to you 
on the question of labor, actually to concentrate the intellectual 
power of the nation upon it, is by gathering together by hun- 
dreds of thousands, no matter whether it be on an industrial 
basis or a political basis, and say to the nation, ' We are the 
numbers, and we will be heard,' and you may be sure that you 
will."i 

While thus occupied on the platform the inde- 
fatigable reformer was equally busy with his pen. 
As a sample of his work for temperance, take this 
striking double picture, which he sent to one of the 
journals of the day, and called " Two Sides of One 
Canvas" : 

" One beautiful afternoon in August, there came to me the 
heart-broken wife of a State-prison convict. We tried to plan 
for his pardon and restoration to home and the world. It was 
a very sad case. He was the only surviving son of a very noble 
man— one who lived only to serve the poor, the tempted, and 
the criminal. All he had, all he was, he gave unreservedly to 
help thieves and drunkards. His house was their home. His 
name their bail to save them from prison. His reward their 
reformation. It was a happy hour to hear him tell of the hun- 
dreds he had shielded from the contamination and evil example 
of prisons, and of the large proportion he had good reason to 
believe permanently saved. Out of hundreds, he once told me. 
only two left him to pay their bail, forfeited by neglect to show 
themselves in court according to agreement — only two ! 

" Bred under such a roof, the son started in life with a gen- 
erous heart, noble dreams, and high purpose. Ten years of 
prosperity, fairly earned by energy, industry, and character, 
ended in bankruptcy, as is so often the case in our risky and 



1 «« 



The Labor Question," pp. 26, 27. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 39/ 

changing trade ; then came a struggle for business, for bread — 
temptation — despair — intemperance. He could not safely pass 
the open doors that tempted him to indulgence, forgetfulness, 
and crime. How hard his wife wrought and struggled to save 
him from indulgence, and then to shield him from exposure ! 
How long wife, sister, and friends labored, to avert conviction 
and the State prison ! ' I would spare him gladly,* wrote the 
prosecuting attorney, ' if he would stop drinking. He shall 
never go to prison if he will be a sober man. But all this 
wretchedness and crime comes from rum.' 

" Manfully did the young fellow struggle to resist the appetite. 
Again and again did he promise, and keep his promise perhaps 
a month, then fall. He could not walk the streets and earn his 
bread soberly while so many open doors — opened by men who 
sought to coin gold out of their neighbors' vices— lured him to 
indulgence. So, rightfully, the State pressed on, and he went 
to prison. An honored name disgraced, a loving home broken 
up, a wide circle of kindred sorely pained, a worthy, well-mean- 
ing man wrecked. Sorrow and crime ' all comes from rum,' 
says the keen-sighted lawyer. 

" As I parted from the sad wife on my door-step, I looked 
beyond, and close by the laughing sea stood a handsome cot- 
tage. The grounds were laid out expensively and with great 
taste. Over the broad piazza hung lazily an Eastern hammock, 
while all around were richly painted chairs and lounges of every 
easy and tempting form. Overhead were quaint vases of beauti- 
ful flowers, and the delicious lawn was bordered with them. 
On the lawn itself gayly dressed women laughed merrily over 
croquet, and noisy children played near. A span of superb 
horses pawed the earth impatiently at the gate, while gay salu- 
tations passed between the croquet-players and the fashionable 
equipages that rolled by. It was a scene of beauty, comfort, 
taste, luxury, and wealth. All came from ru7ti. Silks and dia- 
monds, flowers and equipage, stately roof and costly attend- 
ance, all came from rum. The owner was one who, in a great 
city, coined his gold out of the vices of his fellow-men. 

" To me it was a dissolving view. I lost sight of the gay 
women, the frolicsome children, the impatient horses, and the 
ocean rolling up to the lawn. I saw instead the pale convict in 
his cell twelve feet by nine ; the ^ad wife going from judge to 



398 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

attorney, from court to Governor's Council, begging mercy for 
her overtempted husband, I heard above the children's noise, 
the croquet, laugh, and the surf waves, that lawyer's stern 
reason for exacting the full penalty of the law — all this comes 
from rum. 

" ' Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink. Woe unto 
him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness and his cham- 
bers by wrong, for the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the 
beam out of the timber shall answer it.' " 



V. 

GRANT — GREELEY — FROUDE. 

The Presidential campaign of 1872 was one of the 
most curious on record. Grant was the Republican 
nominee. The Democrats in their despair selected 
Horace Greeley, always their bitter foe, but now 
considered available because he had quarrelled with 
Grant and kicked over the party traces. Stranger 
yet. Senator Sumner, also at odds with the Presi- 
dent, had gone over to the support of Greeley, and 
Avas appealing widely to the colored voters to sup- 
port the " Copperhead" candidate, on the ground 
that he was an Abolitionist. Mr. Sumner and Mr. 
Motley had been ill-used by the Administration. 
Sumner had been deprived of his Chairmanship of 
the Foreign Affairs Senatorial Committee, because 
of his opposition to Grant's proposed acquisition of 
San Domingo ; and Motley had been recalled from 
England, where he had been the American Minister, 
on account of his friendship with Sumner and as a 
stab at the Massachusetts senator. Both Sumner 
and Motley were old and close friends of Mr. Phil- 
lips, who keenly felt and resented their ill-treatment. 
Later he defended both, and set their- wrongs right 
before the public. At present, while smarting under 
the injustice done them, he nevertheless supported 
Grant's candidature and opposed Greeley's, on ac- 
count of the policies and parties in competition. 



400 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

In the summer of 1872, in response to an invitation 
from the colored people of Massachusetts to address 
them on the question of the hour, and help them 
resolve their doubts caused b}^ their inclination to 
vote the Republican ticket and their respect for Mr 
Sumner, who urged them toward Greeley, — Mr. 
Phillips wrote a letter analyzing the situation and 
giving the asked-for advice. It was in his happiest 
vein, and is subjoined as a vivid portrayal of that 
anomalous canvass : 

" My judgment is the exact opposite of Mr. Sumner's. I think 
every loyal man, and especially every colored man, should vote 
for General Grant, and that the nation and your race are only 
safe in the hands of the old, regular Republican party. 

" Some may ask how I come to think thus, when I was one of 
the few loyal men who protested, in 1868, against Grant's nomi- 
nation, and seeing that I have so often affirmed that the Repub- 
lican party has outlived its usefulness. 

" Gentlemen, the reasons which lead me to my present opin- 
ion, in spite of my former views, ought to give my judgment 
more weight with you. I am forced by late developments to my 
present position. 

" You remember, that, in 1868, I emphatically denied General 
Grant's fitness for the Presidency. Derided by the Republican 
press, I went from city to city protesting against his election. 
In private, with Mr. Sumner and others, I argued long and 
earnestly against the risk of putting such a man into such an 
office. At that time they saw only his great merits, and sup- 
ported him h'^.artily. The defects of his Administration are no 
surprise to me. I may say, without boasting, that I prophesied 
those defects. I do not wish to hide them to-day. I entirely 
agree with Mr. Sumner as to the grave fault and intolerable in- 
solence of the Administration in the San Domingo matter. I 
think the frequent putting of relatives into office highly objection- 
able, and the sad career of Webster is warning enough against 
any man in public life venturing to accept gifts from living men. 
These and other defects are no surprise to me. The eminent 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 4OI 

merits of General Grant's Administration are, I confess, a sur- 
prise to me. 

" His original and Christian policy toward the Indians is ad- 
mirable, and, standing alone, is enough to mark him a states- 
man. His patience amid innumerable difficulties in our foreign 
relations is wonderful in one bred a soldier. The aid the Ad- 
ministration has given to the industrial and financial prosperity 
of the country is a great merit. General Grant's prompt inter- 
ference for justice to workingmen in defiance of those about him, 
relative to the execution of the eight-hour law, I shall always 
remember. The crime of the Republican party in tolerating 
the Ku-'Klux is flagrant. But the President and his immediate 
friends deserve our gratitude for their efforts and success in that 
matter. His services to the Fifteenth Amendment, I shall never 
forget. When some, even of the foremost Abolitionists, doubted, 
and were lukewarm, I wrote to Senator Wilson, asking him to 
urge General Grant to put three lines into his first message com- 
mending that measure to Congress and the country. The an- 
swer came back, ' You are too late. General Grant's message 
was finished before your note arrived, and the recommendation 
you wish is in it.' It still remains lamentably true, that the 
colored man has no full recognition at the North, and no 
adequate protection in the South — shame to the Administration 
and to the Republican party ! But his friends may fairly claim 
that, during the last three years, the negro has steadily gained 
in the safe exercise and quiet enjoyment of his rights. 

" If General Grant is set aside, who is offered us in his place ? 
Horace Greeley. I need not tell you, my friends, what Horace 
Greeley is : we Abolitionists knew him only too well in the 
weary years of our struggle. He had enough of clear, moral 
vision to see the justice of our cause ; but he never had courage 
to confess his faith. If events had ever given him the courage, 
he never would have had principle enough to risk anything for 
an idea. A trimmer by nature and purpose, he has abused 
even an American politician's privilege of trading principles for 
success. As for his honesty — for twenty years it has been a 
byword with us that it would be safe to leave your open purse 
in the same room with him ; but, as for any other honesty, no 
one was ever witless enough to connect the idea with his name. 

" Gentlemen, I have another interest in Grant's re-election. 



402 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

The Anti-Slavery cause was only a portion of the great struggle 
between Capital and Labor. Capital undertook to own the 
laborer. We have broken that up. If Grant is elected, that dis- 
pute, and all questions connected with it, sink out of sight. All 
the issues of the war are put beyond debate, and a clear field is 
left for the discussion of the Labor movement. I do not count 
much on the recognition of that niovement by the Republican 
Convention, though I gratefully appreciate it. But I see in the 
bare success itself, of General Grant, the retiring of old issues, 
and the securing of a place for new ones. 

" If Greeley is elected, we shall spend the next four years in 
fighting over the war-quarrels, constitutional amendments, 
negroes' rights. State rights, repudiation, and Southern debts. 
And we shall have besides a contemptuous ignoring of the Labor 
question. Its friends were at Cincinnati. The Convention 
scorned their appeals, and Mr. Schurz himself affirmed that 
Labor was ' not a live issue.* President Grant means peace, and 
cpportunity to agitate the great industrial questions of the day. 
President Greeley means the scandal and wrangle of Andy John- 
son's years over again, with secession encamped in Washington. 

" We have forgiven. But duty to the dead, and to the negro, 
forbids us to trust power to any hands, without undoubted, in- 
dubitable certainty that such hands are trtistworthy. If we fail 
in this caution, we shall only have decoyed the negro into dan- 
ger, and left him doubly defenceless. I wish my voice could be 
heard by every colored man down to the Gulf, — not because they 
need my advice. No : they understand and see the danger. 
But I should like to rally them to help us, a second time, to save 
the nation. I should say to them, ' Vote, every one of you, for 
Grant, as you value property, life, wife, or child. If Greeley is 
elected, arm, concentrate, conceal your property, but organize 
for defence. You will need it soon, and sadly.' 

" Workingmen, rally now, to save your great question from 
being crowded out, and postponed another four years. 

" Soldiers, at the roll-call in November, let no loyal man fail 
to answer to his name." ^ 

This advice was heard and heeded. Greeley was 



^ Vide Boston Daily Advertiser, August loth, 1872. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 403 

buried under an adverse vote, and Grant remained 
for a second term in the White House. 

From the commencement of his pubHc career, Mr. 
Phillips had been in profound sympathy with Ireland 
in her sorrows and sufferings under English misrule. 
He had visited the Emerald Isle, — had seen the 
misery, — had marked th'e prejudice, — had imbibed 
the spirit of Emmet, of Grattan, of Moore, — had 
been intimate with O'Connell, whose eulogist he 
made himself. Probably no other American, cer- 
tainly no other American of prominence, was so 
familiar with the story of Ireland's woes as he was, 
both from personal observation and from study. 
For thirty 3^ears he never omitted an opportunity to 
plead her cause before the grand jury of the Ameri- 
can people. As that cause came up more and more 
frequently for consideration over here, he corre- 
spondingly increased the number and pungency of 
his speeches on that topic. 

In 1873 James Anthony Froude, who masqueraded 
as an historian, and who was a brilliant pamphleteer, 
landed in Boston and delivered a series of lectures 
on England and Ireland (which he subsequently re- 
peated in the large cities), — ingenious, able, and mis- 
leading. The one man fitted by genius, knowledge 
of the subject, and the possession of the public ear, 
to challenge his statements, explode his falsehoods, 
elevate Ireland in American esteem, — was Wendell 
Phillips. And self-prompted, he assumed the con- 
genial task. In a lecture entitled " Inferences from 
Froude," careful in statement, judicious and judicial 
in tone, and in a style that coruscated, before the 
culture of Boston, amid a tumult of applause, the 
deed was done, Mr. Phillips traversed the entire 



404 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

field of controversy. We can give no more than a 
specimen page or two : 

" When during the Franco-Prussian War, Bismarck smote 
England contemptuously in the face, in the presence of all 
Europe, why did she not draw the sword ? She never had been 
reluctant to draw the sword. She had been the great inter- 
meddler for the last three centuries. There could not be a crisis 
in the remotest corner of the globe, about the most insignificant 
motive in the world, that England did not put in her mailed 
hand. Palmerston's laurels were all won from meddling in 
other people's messes. If China wished to give up opium, Eng- 
land wished it to be there. If Portugal and Spain differed, Can- 
ning must send his fleet to watch over the safety of Lisbon. 
She never knew a war that she could leave alone. Why did she 
break the great historic precedent of two hundred years in this 
single instance ? 

" I believe, that instead of England's having conquered Ire- 
land, in the true, essential statement of the case, as it stands 
to-day, Ireland has conquered England ! She has summoned 
her before the bar of the civilized world, to answer and plead 
for the justice of her legislation ; she has checkmated her as a 
power on the chess-board of Europe ; she has monopolized the 
attention of her statesmen ; she has made her own island the 
pivot upon which the destiny of England turns ; and her last 
great statesman, Mr. Gladstone, owes whatever fame he has, to 
the supposition that at last he has devised a way by which he 
can conciliate Ireland, and save his own country. 

" I thank Mr. Froude that he has painted the Irishman as a 
chronic rebel. It shows that at least the race knew that they 
were oppressed, and gathered together all the strength that God 
had given them to resist. They never rested contented. It is 
by no means, therefore, a surprise that a patriotic Englishman, 
looking back on the last three centuries, should long to justify 
his nation and his own race, after having conceived that it has 
all the brains, and two thirds of the heart of the world. It vol- 
unteered to be the guardian of this obstinate Ireland. It volun- 
teered to furnish a government to the distracted, ignorant, pov- 
erty-stricken, demoralized millions of Ireland. It has been 
three hundred years at the experiment ; and Mr. Froude told us 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 4O5 

the other evening, that, rather than let Ireland go, — weary of 
their long failure, — rather than let Ireland go, they would exter- 
minate the Irish race ! What a confession of statesmanship ! 
* We have tried for three hundred years to manufacture a gov- 
ernment, and at the end of it our alternative is extermination ! ' 

" Well, you see, the world asks, whence comes this result ? 
Was the English race incapable ? Did it lack courage ? Did it 
lack brains ? Did it lack care ? Did it lack common sense ? 
Did it lack that discriminating sagacity which knows time and 
place ? What is the meaning of this failure ? And, of course, 
the only answer of an Englishman who is unwilling to tear down 
the great splendor of his flag, is, to find the cause in the dogged 
incapacity of Ireland, and not in any lack of his own country. 
Mr. Froude is obliged to prove that the Irish were left by God 
unfinished, and that you cannot, by any wit of man, manufac- 
ture a citizen out of an Irishman. He is shut up to this argu- 
ment : for, unless he proves the Irishman a knave, he is obliged, 
from the facts of the case, to confess England a fool ; that is the 
grand alternative. 

" He comes, therefore, to us with that purpose. He comes to 
excuse England on the ground of Irish incapacity. Well, it was 
a marvellously bad choice of a jury : for there were a number 
of logical, middle-aged gentlemen, who met in Philadelphia, on 
the fourth day of July. 1776, and asserted that God created every 
man fit to be a citizen ; that he did not leave any race so half 
made up and half finished, that they were to travel through the 
cycle of three hundred years under the guardianship of any 
power. And, on that fourth day of July, they established the 
corner-stone of American political faith, that all men are capable 
of self-government ; while the whole substratum of this course 
of lectures, by this eloquent British scholar, was the claim that 
Gjd left Ireland so unfinished that a merciful despotism was 
necessary." ' 

The fact that he was thus confronted on the thresh- 
old of his American tour by the most formidable 
orator in the world, by whom his facts were denied 



' Vide the pamphlet containing the lecture in various public 
libraries. 



406 WENDELL I^IULLIIS. 

his theories refuted, his object disclosed, — naturally 
discouraged Mr. Froude, and he soon retired from 
the unequal contest ; while Mr. Phillips received the 
grateful thanks of Erin. 

Mrs. Phillips had taken a fancy to Svvampscott, 
down by the sea, as a summer residence. Her hus- 
band, always desirous of carrying out her wishes, 
had secured an abode there ; and there they passed 
the summer of 1873, as they had that of 1872. lie 
enjoyed this breathing spell, before active life again 
caught him up and whirled him away. 

The cold wxather soon did this, and the " vaga- 
bond lecturer" (as he nicknamed himself) set out 
once more upon his travels. In December, 1873, he 
looked in upon a fine gathering of the Woman Suf- 
fragists at Faneuil Hall, and spoke with his accus- 
tomed vim and finish, with the Rev. James Freeman 
Clarke, Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, Frederick Doug- 
lass, Mrs. Lucy Stone, and Mr. Garrison as fellow- 
orators. Mr. Phillips regarded the restricted sphere 
of woman as due to her own indifference and to mas- 
culine selfishness. It never occurred to him to attrib- 
ute it, as Miss Frances E. W^illard did, not long 
ago, to the dress of the gentler sex : 

** Catch Edison and constrict him inside a wasp 
waistcoat, and be sure you'll get no more inven- 
tions ; bind a bustle upon Bismarck, and farewell to 
German unity ; coerce Robert Browning into cor- 
sets, and you'll have no more epics ; put Parnell 
into petticoats, and Home Rule is a lost cause.'* 

On the whole, we freely admit that we should be 
sorry to see these gentlemen in any such rig. 



VI 

OLLA PODRIDA. 

The year 1874 was not specially notable in the life 
of Mr. Phillips. He did not vegetate by any means, 
but occupied the hours largely with routine duties, 
— lecturing in the winter and spring, and resuming 
the platform in the fall, after the summer interrup- 
tion. 

In July he received some pamphlets from the Eng- 
lish reformer, George J. Hol3^oake, which he ac- 
knowledged in a letter from which we extract a few 
paragraphs touching upon current topics : 

*' I wish I could have an hour's talk with you on this Labor 
and Capital question, — one, perhaps, to have as angry an agita- 
tion as slavery caused. VVealili, with you, governs ; but its 
power is, I suppose, somewhat masked, sometimes counterveiled 
or checked by other forces. With us it rules, bare, naked, 
shameless, undisguised. 0\ir incorporated yNQ2i\\h., often wielded 
by a single hand, is fearful with direct, and still more with in- 
direct, power. We have single men who wield four hundred 
million dollars, so shaped that towns, counties, States, are its 
vassals. Two or three united railways {one president) will sub- 
ject a State to their will. Vanderbilt is reported to say, " It is 
cheaper and surer to buy legislatures than voters." This is 
the peril of universal suffrage. Then, rum rules our great 
cities whenever it chooses to exert its power. The sadness of 
the whole thing is, one hardly sees whence the cure is to come. 
I believe, I don't see. Truly our movements demand a most 
patient faith. I never expected to see any success of our Anti- 
Slavery struggle. Fortified in Church, State, and capital, the 



408 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

system would have outlived this generation, and perhaps the 
next, with ordinary shrewdness on the part of its friends. The 
gods made them mad on their way to destruction, and so hast- 
ened it. 

" Neither shall I live long enough to see any marked result of 
our Labor movement here, though it is true that our masses 
ripen marvellously quick ; but, as you've said, the cliques, jeal- 
ousies, distrust, and ignorance of workingmen are our chief 
obstacles. Indeed, we sometimes get better help from open- 
hearted capitalists. Your ranks are infinitely better trained than 
ours to stand together on some one demand just long enough to 
be counted, and so insure that respect which numbers always 
command in politics where universal suffrage obtains. Then 
we'd have all the brains of the land, our servants, and soon 
gain that attention which is//^r^ half of success. But I suppose 
all this is familiar to you, as well as the strength we expect from 
related questions, — finances, mode of taxation, land tenure, etc. 
There'll never be, I believe and trust, a class-party here, Labor 
against Capital, the lines are so indefinite, like dove's-neck 
colors. Three fourths of our population are to some extent 
capitalists ; and, a'gain, all see that there is really, and ought 
always to be, alliance, not struggle, between them. So we lean 
chiefly on related questions for growth : limitation of hojrs is 
almost the only special measure. But enough." ^ 

At this time a sorry state of things prevailed in 
the South. The Secession States had been recon- 
structed, and a struggle was going on between the 
loyal and the disloyal elements down there for the 
control. Louisiana, particularly, heaved with insur- 
rection. She, too, had resumed her Statehood and 
used it to oppress the negroes. The Governor had 
been placed in powder bv their votes, and made him- 
self their champion. The Legislature was filled 
with their foes, and became an engine of oppression. 



* FJrV<r Austin's " Life and Times of Wendell Phillips," pp. 304, 
305. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 409 

With the Governor on one side and the Legislature 
on the other. Louisiana was as stormy as the Bay of 
Biscay. Finally the Governor appealed to the Ad- 
ministration to assist him in maintaining law and 
order. President Grant straightway ordered Gen- 
eral Sheridan, who was in command of the Depart- 
ment, with his headquarters at New Orleans, to sup- 
port the State executive. Instantly there arose 
throughout the Union a clamor against Grant and 
Sheridan from the Democrats and the Greeley Re- 
publicans. The National Government was accused 
of trampling upon State rights — quite the old rebel 
yell. Public meetings were held to denounce the 
" outrage ;" among the rest, one in Boston, on Jan- 
uary 15th, 1875, in Faneuil Hall. The call for this 
last had been largely signed by Greeley Republi- 
cans, who, however, were mostly absent when the 
meeting was held, the old hall being crowded by 
Democrats, with a contingent of regular Republi- 
cans who had come in to watch the proceedings. 
Mr. Phillips, greatly interested in the Louisiana 
plot, sat quietly in the gallery. Resolutions were 
read denouncing Grant and Sheridan. The speakers 
one after another had their say, loud cries for Phil- 
lips ringing through the hall as each concluded and 
the next was introduced. Neither the chairman nor 
the orator paid any attention to these calls, until the 
programme was ended, when the demand was so 
loud and persistent that it could not be ignored. At 
last, the chairman said: "This is Faneuil Hall — 
sacred to free speech. If any gentleman desires to 
speak, he shall be heard." 

Mr. Phillips rose in the gallery, but was called 
to the platform. Amid the din he soon made him- 



410 WENDELL PHILLrPS. 

self heard and commanded attention. The meeting 
claimed to speak for Boston, although all the speakers 
were outsiders. The orator dwelt on this fact with 
great effect : 

" Here are Adams, from Quincy, Saltonstall, from New York, 
and this, that, and the other gentleman, from Salem, Cam- 
bridge, Worcester — everywhere but Boston. In the absence of 
Dana. Bigelow, Bartlett, the bar is not here. In the absence of 
the merchants of the city, commerce is not here. This meeting 
represents individuals — nothing else. Boston is not here." 

He then proceeded to make a lucid constitutional 
argument in the vindication of Grant and Sheridan, 
and ended thus : 

" I wanted to record my protest against these resolutions con- 
demning President Grant and General Sheridan for doing their 
duty. Other men have done this by their absence. I choose to 
do it by my presence, — in this very hall, and under this roof, 
where 1 have so often labored for the liberty which Louisiana 
now threatens." 

The speech was boisterously applauded, and hissed, 
too — an old-time scene. But the presence and 
speech of Mr. Phillips killed the purpose for which 
the meeting had been called. An amendment to the 
resolutions was offered, praising Grant and Sheridan, 
and carried, though the chairman declared it lost. 
And so the denunciation exploded in a laugh at the 
denouncers. Boston had spoken — but not in the 
expected way/ 

A question of wider interest than the Louisiana 
muddle, related in these da3'S to the currency. 

Worcester defines currency to be " that which 
passes for money, in a country ; the aggregate of 

' Vide Boston dailies of January i6th, 1875, and New York Tribune, 
January i6th, 1875. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 4^1 

coin, bills, notes, etc., in circulation." Of course, 
the first care of a country is to establish a currency 
—has been since the dawn of history. When the 
precious metals were scarce, other standards of 
value were used. Iron was the coin of the Spartans, 
copper that of the Romans. Next silver came in. 
Finally, St. Louis adopted a gold currency for 
France. Since then gold and silver have formed the 
double standard, until recently, when England sub- 
stituted gold alone. But as there is neither gold nor 
silver enough in existence to carry on the business 
of these modern commercial times, each country has* 
supplemented the metals by a bank-note currency, 
convertible into gold or silver on demand. 

When the Rebellion broke out, the Government, 
in order to conduct its stupendous operations, issued 
bonds to raise money, and notes, called greenbacks 
from their color, as a circulating medium. The 
situation was desperate. Money-lenders would not 
buy the bonds save at a heavy discount ; and though 
the greenbacks were a legal tender, it took two or 
three dollars in currency to make a gold dollar. 
With the success of the Union, the greenbacks appre- 
ciated, but gold continued to command a fluctuating 
premium. The constant endeavor of the Govern- 
ment from 1865 onward to 1878, when it succeeded, 
was to resume specie payments— that is, to make the 
greenbacks worth their face value. Meanwhile, 
through these years trade was disturbed, financial 
panics were frequent and gold remained in Europe. 
The plans for remedying these evils were as 
numerous as the individuals who proposed them. 
Mr. Phillips had his plan. He first stated it in pub- 
lic at a meeting of the American Social Science Asso- 



412 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

ciation, in Boston, on March 3d, 1875. Briefly, his 
points were these : 

1. Take away from the banks the right to issue 
bills, and call in those now in circulation. 

2. Let the Government supply a national currency 
ample to meet the demands of business — its issue 
being secured by the wealth of the country. 

3. Reduce the heavy rates of interest by calling in 
outstanding interest-bearing bonds. 

The results of such a policy, he contended, would 
be fourfold, viz., to redeem and destroy the present 
greenbacks, and thus silence the complaint that 
Government had not kept faith in their redemption ; 
to put the currency on a basis as stable as the na- 
tional resources, and thus avoid the danger of inter- 
ference by the gold rings here and abroad ; to make 
the bonds a good permanent investment for capital- 
ists ; and to develop the country by making it possi- 
ble for individual borrowers to get money at a low 
rate from the Government by placing collateral in 
its hands. 

This would make the new greenbacks as good as 
gold. It would bring about practical resumption of 
specie payments. Before long the Government 
bonds would command a premium.^ 

*' Three times within a dozen years," said he ** capitalists 
with their knives on the throat of the Government, have com- 
pelled it to cheat its largest creditor, the people ; whose claim, 
Burke said, was the most sacred. First, the pledge that green- 
backs should be exchangeable with bonds was broken. Sec- 
ondly, debts originally payable in paper, as Sherman confessed 
in the Senate, were made payable in gold. Thirdly, silver was 



' Vide New Yoik Tribune, March 4th, 1875. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 413 

demonetized, and gold made the only tender. A thousand milU 
ions were thus stolen from the people." ^ 

These views Mr. Phillips embodied in a lecture on- 
" Finance," Avhich he delivered widely for several 
years. In the fall of 1875 he exchanged shots with 
Carl Schurz on this question, his pistol being- the 
New York Herald,'' while Schurz's revolver was the 
New York Tribune. It was like a French duel- 
neither was hurt. The Agitator never claimed orig- 
inality for his financial theories. He held them in 
common with a host of others, many of whom were 
among the shrewdest and most successful of Ameri- 
can financiers. But his way of stating and defending 
them was all his own, and was characterized by his 
usual ingenuity and brilliancy of style. 

While a heretic in finance, Phillips was orthodox 
in another branch of political economy — he was a 
Protectionist. On a certain occasion the Hon. 
David A. Wells, the eminent free-trader, read a 
paper in a circle of savants, enforcing his views. 
Mr. Phillips, who was among the listeners, expressed 
his dissent, when the essayist was through : 

" Fifteen years ago I advocated free trade. I was misled by 
theoretical arguments, but was set right by Mr. Henry Gary, the 
patriarch of political economy. I heard Gary say : ' I had just 
finished a crushing reply to the New England tariff men, — one 
that I thought demolished their whole structure of argument. 
I went to bed delighted with my success in stating my case. 
Somehow I could not help seeing that, though the logic seemed 
perfect, it did not cover the facts. On paper it was all right ; 
out in the world the facts were the other way. I lay awake all 
night, chewing on the contradiction, and arose the next morn- 
ing a tariff man.' Any one who listened from Gary's lips to the 



* " Reminiscences of the Radical Club," p. 165. 

' New York Herald, October 6th, 1875, and Tribune^ October gth. 



414 WENDELL PHILLII'S. 

stern facts which converted him in that night of anxious, honest 
thought would never again be duped by free trade. 

" Nations are large enough to be considered separately from 
each other. Internal industry should be diversified. Under 
free-trade rule our country would be wholly agricultural. Other 
elements must be considered besides the mere question of 
wealth. Should we lose our diversified occupations, we would 
suffer a great loss, though there might be a pecuniary gain. 
Nations might gain the whole world— that is, half the material 
wealth of the world — and yet lose their own souls and most of 
their bodies, too. Theories are pleasing things, and seem to 
get rid of all difficulties so very easily. One must begin to ab- 
stract principles and study them. But wisdom consists in per- 
ceiving when human nature and this perverse world necessitate 
making exceptions to abstract truths. Any boy can see an ab- 
stract principle. Only threescore years and ten can discern 
precisely when and where it is well, necessary, and right to 
make an exception to it. That faculty is wisdom, all the rest is 
playing with counters. And this explains how the influx into 
politics of a shoal of college-boys, slenderly furnished with 
Greek and Latin, but steeped in marvellous and delightful igno- 
rance of life and public affairs, is filling the country with free- 
trade din. 

" National lines — artificial lines — trip up fine theories sadly. 
If all the world were under one law, and every man raised to 
the level of the Sermon on the Mount, free trade would be so 
easy and so charming ! But while nations study only how to 
cripple their enemies, — that is, their neighbors, — and while each 
trader strives to cheat his customer and strangle the firm on the 
other side of the street, we must not expect the millennium." ' 

The centennial of the birth of Daniel O'Connell 
occurred on August 6th, 1875. The Irish race cele- 
brated it around the globe. In Boston, the observ- 
ance was most remarkable. Wendell Phillips was 
the orator of the occasion, the vast Music Hall the 
place, and applauding thousands the participators. 



' " Reminiscences of the Radical Club," pp. 162, 163. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 415 

The oration was a masterpiece — the apotheosis of 
one agitator by another. It ranks among- the half 
dozen supreme efforts of the kind in the English lan- 
guage, and displays the marvellous powers of Mr. 
Phillips at their best/ 

Later in the year he threw into a single presenta 
tion the three questions nearest his heart, and under 
the caption of " Temperance, Labor, and Woman" ^ 
pleaded these causes simultaneously. This, too, was 
a remarkable achievement ; not on account of any 
novelty of views, for these were more or less familiar 
to his audiences, but because of the felicitous manner 
in which he fitted such seemingly diverse themes 
together, and made them seem related parts of one 
great whole. 

For years the Indians had been numbered among 
Mr. Phillips's principal clients. In 1875 he prepared 
a lecture on this subject, and gave it frequently. 
His solution of the Indian problem was like his solu- 
tion of all such questions — love and justice. He 
thought the redman had been shamefully abused, — 
held on the frontier, — surrounded by soldiers, not 
laws, — robbed of his lands as often as white greed 
coveted them, — sent for redress to a colonel, not to 
a court, — and dealt with under a policy of extermi- 
nation rather than civilization, our weapons a musket 
and a whiskey-bottle. This he contrasted with the 
English method in Canada, where a white man could 
vault into the saddle and ride from Montreal to the 
Pacific without a pistol, — where civilization had 
adopted the Indians as fast as they were reached, — 

^ Vide Appendix for the oration in full. 

' This lecture was widely reported at the time, but no complete re- 
port is now at han4' 



4l6 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

and where the Crown had spent nothing for a hun- 
dred years for blood and spoliation ; while the 
United States had lavished hundreds of millions only 
to place our Government on a level with the barbar- 
ism it condemned. He hailed the Indian policy of 
General Grant as the first suggestion, since William 
Penn, of a Christian heart and a sane mind touching 
the aborigines on the part of the Republic* 

Chronic outbreaks on the frontier, such as the 
Modoc war and the episode of Sitting Bull and Gen- 
eral Custer, gave timeliness and point to these utter- 
ances. Indeed, Mr. Phillips seldom wasted his ammu- 
nition on dead issues ; his aim being, like Pope's, to 

"Shoot folly as it flies." 

On his birthday, this year, he received a lovely 
basket of flowers from some thoughtful friends, 
which he thus noticed : 

" November 2g, 1875. 

" Dear Friends : It is pleasant to have some one remember 
our birthdays. It carries us back to times of childhood, — 
mother, brothers, and sisters. How laughingly and joyously 
we counted them up then, as they came only too slowly along, 
keeping back the presents we longed for. Now they hurry- 
scurry on, coming round so quickly. 

" Well, we all walk along together. We shall keep abreast. 

" Ann will cosset and enjoy your beautiful basket for many a 

week, and I shall enjoy her joy in it. 

'* Yours faithfully, 

" Wendell Phillips." 
Mr. and Mrs. Sargent. 



' The lecture on the Indians was never fully reported — only out- 
lined. But in 1S66 and the succeeding years Mr. Phillips frequently 
dealt with the question in the columns of the Anti-Slavery Standard, 
to which those interested are referred. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 417 

At another time, in this same year, he wrote in a 
different vein, to Mrs. John T. Sargent : 

" Dear Madam : You know my benevolence. Well, it is 
therefore that I hasten to inform you of your good fortune. 

" Most people leave legacies when they die. 

" But you know Tom Appletonsays that' when good Yankees 
die they go to Paris.' Well, one of your friends, starting for 
Paris, seems to have imagined that she was dying. At any rate, 
she acted as if dying and left you a legacy. This is it : ' When 
you come to Boston go down with a strong porter to the Com- 
monwealth rooms and you'll find there the bust of Colonel 
Shaw.' 

" Edmonia Lewis, starting for Europe, said tome: * That 
dear, good woman, I do love her. I want her to have it. Give 
it to her as my legacy.' 

" There, be happy and proud. And if you can't go on a 
bust, go after one." * 



* Letter in the possession of Mrs. J. T. Sargent (mi.). 



VII. 

USEFULNESS. 

The philanthropy of Wendell Phillips was local as 
well as cosmopolitan. That he pleaded for the negro 
in the South and the Indian in the West, for the 
Irishmen under the tyranny of England and the 
Cretan beneath the Sultan's cimeter, is known. He 
also saw, felt for, and relieved the want that sobbed, 
and sometimes stole and stabbed, just 'round the 
corner. For years, he spent a large part of each 
morning in court, at the jail, or in some wretched 
home, looking up needy cases, helping indigent 
women to honest work, or defending some poor 
fellow who was hurt or hunted. 

One night, in crossing Boston Common, on his re- 
turn from a late meeting, he was accosted by a street- 
walker. She looked into his face, instinctively felt her 
mistake, and said : " You are not one of my sort, but, 
for the love of God, give me money !" He glanced 
kindly in her face, saw there the wreck of comeliness, 
took her arm, and pacing back and forth, drew out 
her story. It was the old one, — misplaced affection, 
— betrayal, — desertion, — a child left on her hands, — 
no means of virtuous livelihood, — the street. Now 
she wanted money for the child. He investigated, 
found she had not lied, and helped her to a new life.' 



1 



The writer had this story from several friends of Mr. Phillips who 
tvere acquainted with the facts. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 419 

Mr. Phillips haunted the streets of Boston. " They 
are a good place for the study of human nature," 
said he ; " better than the theatre, for here both 
tragedy and comedy are real — and so are the actors. 
His friend, William I, Bovvditch, discovered him 
one morning, when the pavement was thronged with 
business men, leaning against the granite wall of a 
bank on State Street, like a mendicant. " Wendell," 
said he, " if you want these people to give you 
money you must take off your hat and hold it in your 
hand." ^ 

All Bostonians have a local pride ; Phillips loved 
the very stones of his native city. " No one who 
heard it," remarks Mr. Higginson, "can ever for- 
get the thrilling modulation of his voice when he 
said at some special crisis of the Anti-Slavery agita- 
tion : ' I love inexpressibl}' these streets of Boston, 
over whose pavements my mother held up tenderly 
my bab}^ feet ; and if God grants me time enough, 
I will make them too pure to bear the footsteps of a 
slave.' " ^ The historic landmarks of the city were 
his delight. He regarded them as the noblest instruc- 
tors. Therefore, when the " Old South" Church 
was threatened with destruction, he exerted himself 
for salvation. This was peculiarly dear to him as 
the oldest of Boston's public edifices, older than the 
Old State House, older than Faneuil Hall, dating 
from 1729. The religious society which owned it 
had sold the building, and business was about to raze 
it and occupy the site. To save it $400,000 were 
required. The people of the Commonwealth shared 



' Mr. Bovvditch is authority for this story. 
■'' Higginson's " Wendell Phillips," p. 14. 



420 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

in the orator's feeling, and $200,000 were obtained 
by popular subscription. 

On June 14th, 1876, Mr. Phillips spoke in the 
"Old South" Church in the interest of this move- 
ment. 

" Except the Holy City," he asked, " is there any more mem- 
orable place on the face of the earth than this ? Athens has 
her Acropolis, but the Greek can point to no such immediate re- 
sults. Her influence passes into the web and woof of history, 
mixed with a score of other elements ; and it needs a keen eye 
to follow it. London has her Palace and Tower, and her St. 
Stephen's Chapel ; but the human race owes her no such mem- 
ories. France has spots marked by the sublimest devotions ; 
but the pilgrimage and the Mecca of the man who believes in 
and hopes for the human race is not to Paris. It is to the sea- 
board cities of the great republic. And when the flag was as- 
sailed, when the merchant waked up from his gain, the scholar 
from his studies, and the regiments marched one by one through 
the streets, which were the pavements that thrilled under their 
footsteps ? What walls did they salute as the regimental flags 
floated by to Gettysburg and Antietam ? These ! Our boys 
carried down to the battle-fields the memory of State Street, and 
Faneuil Hall, and the 'Old South' Church. . . . 

" Go ask the Londoner, crowded into small space, what num- 
ber of pounds laid down on a square foot, what necessities of 
business, would induce him to pull down the Tower, and build 
a counting-house on its site ! Go ask Paris what they will take 
from some business corporation for the spot where Mirabeau 
and Danton, or, later down, Lamartine saved the great flag of 
the tri-color from being drenched in the blood of their fellow- 
citizens ! What makes Boston a history ? Not so many men, 
not so much commerce. It is ideas. You might as well plough 
it with salt, and remove bodily into the more healthy elevation 
of Brookline or Dorchester, but for State Street, Faneuil Hall, 
and the ' Old South' Church ! 

" What does Boston mean ? Since 1630, the living fibre, 
running through history, which owns that name, means jealousy 
of power, unfettered speech, keen sense of justice, readiness to 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 42 i 

champion any good cause. That is the Boston Laud suspected, 
North hated, and the negro loved. If you destroy the scenes 
which perpetuate that Boston, then rebaptize her Cottonville or 
Shoetown." ' 

An interesting incident in connection with this 
oration was the presence of Dom Pedro, the Bra- 
ziHan Emperor, in the audience. Mr. Phillips had 
met him in the afternoon at a delio:htful seance in 
the Chestnut Street parlors of his friends, Mr. and 
Mrs. Sargent, — arranged special!}- to enable Dom 
Pedro to meet Whittier, with whom he had corre- 
sponded many years concerning poetry and slavery. 
Phillips found the Emperor to be a thorough Aboli- 
tionist ; and not long afterward he abolished slavery 
m Brazil ; Whittier being, as he affirmed, his en- 
lightener, and therefore the Brazilian liberator. 

When the venerable poet entered and interrupted 
the conversation with Mr. Phillips, Dom Pedro rose, 
caught him in his arms and kissed him, after the 
fashion of the Latin race. The blushing Friend, 
diffident as a girl, was quite abashed, but with a 
cordial grasp of the hand drew his royal admirer to 
a sofa, where they sat and chatted for half an hour. 
Then the conversation became general. The Ein- 
peror, who spoke English perfectly, told of his driv- 
ing over to see Bunker Hill Monument at six o'clock 
in the morning. He found the keeper abed. When 
he was at last aroused, his Majesty, having forgotten 
his purse, was obliged to borrow half a dollar of his 
hackman to pay the entrance fee. There was a 
laugh at this, and Mr. Phillips told him the rest of 
the story ; how, two hours later, a well-known leader 

^ This oraiion, revised by Mr. Phillips, is on sale at the " Olci 
South" Church, in Boston. 



422 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

of the Boston ton came in, looked over the book, 
saw and recognized Dom Pedro's signature, and 
asked how the Emperor looked. Putting on his 
glasses to examine the handwriting, the fretful 
guardian muttered : " Emperor ! that's a dodge ; 
that fellow was only a scapegrace without a cent in 
his pocket." 

Mr. Phillips was pleased with Dom Pedro. He 
found him intelligent, keenly interested in scientific, 
educational, and reformatory matters, and altogether 
the most remarkable specimen of democratic royalty 
imaginable. With the blood of the Bourbons, the 
Hapsburgs, and the Braganzas in his veins — the 
haughtiest and most despotic of houses— he was the 
unpretentious crony of radicals. He made himself 
a father to his people, and assured Phillips and 
Whittier that his ultimate purpose was to educate 
Brazil into republicanism.* 

It was for its educational influence that the orator 
valued the " Old South" Church. Indeed, in one 
phase or another, he regarded education as the most 
essential interest of the State. Yet it is significant 
of the practical cast of his mind, that at the very time 

' *' Reminiscences of the Radical Club," pp. 301, 302. The recent 
revolution in that country we may be sure cost Dom Pedro no pangs. 
He only thought Brazil not yet ripe for self-government. He had 
held it a lifetime without disturbance, promoted peace and progress, 
and aggrandized the Empire. He dreaded to see Brazil imitate the 
other republics of South America, which, because unready for repub- 
licanism, are always disturbed, and change governments so fast that 
no president sits long enough to get a photograph. But what has 
occurred there he had prepared the way for. He was a crowned 
emancipationist and republican. The manner in which the revolu- 
tionists treated him is significant of their respect for his character and 
purposes. Dom Pedro is the only dethroned Emperor in history who 
was dismissed with regret, with presents, and with a pension. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 423 

when he was pleading- for a sentiment as embodied 
in the " Old South," he should make m another 
place and relation a criticism upon the training of 
the young in the public and private schools as lack- 
ing in practical purpose. 

"Our schools," he remarked, "ignore the fact that seven 
tenths of their scholars must earn their daily bread. They teach 
without reference to that. And the boys and girls after gradu- 
ating have to unlearn what they have learned, and begin again in 
order to get a livelihood. They should be trained with constant 
reference to affairs — toward and not away from. the farm, the 
shop, the counting-room. The instruction ought to be technical.' ' * 

The committee having in charge the preservation of 
the "Old South" Church had organized a lecture 
course in aid of their fund, and, remembering the 
oration in 1876, honored the orator by securing his 
services to open the series. The result was the pro- 
duction and delivery by him on May 17th, 1877, of a 
new biographical lecture on " Sir Harry Vane." 
From the " Old South" he carried it out to the Ly- 
ceum audiences of the country, and its success was 
instantaneous. Unfortunatelv, there is no phono- 
graphic report in existence, so that it cannot survive. 
But Sir Harry Vane was one of the heroes of Wen- 
dell Phillips. He placed the young English repub- 
lican, who had been Governor of Massachusetts at 
the age of twenty-four, in advance of VVinthrop, 
Adams, and Franklin ; declared that he projected 
his ideas far into the future ; and when a boy boldly 
announced the faith of the nineteenth century in the 
middle of the seventeenth." 



• Vide New York Tribune, December 7th, 1876. 
■^ The daily press of Boston briefly reported the lecture on May 
x8ih, 1S77. 



424 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Mr. Phillips knew how to wait. But he had a 
retentive memory. We have mentioned the keen- 
ness with which he felt the injustice of the adminis- 
tration in recalling Motley from London in 1870, and 
in dropping Sumner from the Committee of Foreign 
Relations in 1871. The great senator died in 1874.' 
And now Motley, in 1877/ followed him to the 
grave. Prompted by the double bereavement, their 
survivor prepared and began to deliver, in Novem- 
ber, 1877, a eulogy on " Charles Sumner," in which 
he vindicated these old friends. After a brief but 
affectionate portrayal of Sumner's career, he passed 
to the consideration of the historic difficulty between 
Grant and Secretary Fish on one side, and the sen- 
ator and Motley on the other : 

" General Grant has thrown the weight of his name against 
Mr. Sumner. I have a great respect for General Grant. 1 have 
been a Grant man when Faneuil Hall hissed me for it. I ac- 
knowledge his merits. I have no doubt of his sincere patriotism. 
But General Grant must remember that, when he impeaches 
history and the loftiest patriotism, there are blows to take as 
well as to give, and it is himself that provoked the quarrel. I 
have always known Mr. Sumner as the most methodical, labori- 
ous, painstaking, and business-like member of the Senate. The 
only members of Congress, in my day, who have had a regular 
ledger, or docket, of public employment and engagements, were 
General B. F. Butler and Mr, Charles Sumner. They were the 
only two members of Congress that I ever knew to do business 
on business principles, and I felt great surprise and indignation 
when the charge of negligence of public business was made by 
General Grant against Mr. Sumner. It was only outdone by 
the intimation that Charles Sumner had told a falsehood. As 
Schurz says in his eulogy, he was so direct, he could not carry 
anything by a flank movement. His nature was incapable of 
concealment. He had none of the usual tact of men who push 

* On March nth. ' On May 30th. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 425 

their plans in the world. He made up for it by superhuman 
energy, with which he bore down all opposition. 

" The case to which General Grant refers is the removal of 
Mr. Sumner from the chairmanship of the Committee on Foreign 
Relations, which he says was proper and justifiable, because 
Mr. Sumner was negligent of public duty, and the confirmation 
of the act is found in the charge that Mr. Sumner had been de- 
tected in a falsehood. You remember Mr. Sumner's singular 
fitness for that chairmanship. Carl Schurz says no chairman 
ever came to the office so eminently fitted for it. This is the 
man removed for negligence, for leaving his pigeon-holes full of 
treaties. You remember the position of Mr. Fish when Sumner 
was deposed. You remember that the whole North surged with 
hot indignation. When did General Grant first find this out 
against Sumner ? Why did they not think of this before ? Why 
never utter it till now ? If the opposition papers had known that 
Mr. Sumner was negligent, would they not have told of it ? No ; 
this charge is an after-thought. If it had been true, we should 
have heard of it from every chamber of types in the country. 
Go to the Republican papers and the anti-Grant papers ; they 
never heard of these charges. 

" But General Grant says that Mr. Sumner lied. I remember 
the occasion. Pardon me if I recite it. Mr. Sumner received 
from the hands of General Grant the treaty of San Domingo, — 
from General Grant, who drove up to his door while he was 
sitting with some friends at dinner-table. He said to the Presi- 
dent, ' I will look at the bill. I trust I shall have the pleasure 
of supporting the administration.' They were words of polite- 
ness, of courtesy merely, without having examined the instru- 
ment. When he went home, and examined it, he found the dark 
treachery to the black race. The next day he found General 
Grant, and took back even the courteous words. He pointed 
out the objections to the treaty, laid before him the impossibility 
of his supporting it, and urged a reconsideration of the action 
of the administration. General Grant listened in silence, — per- 
haps I might say sullen silence. There was present a gentleman 
who has been in Washington for forty years, and he came away 
with Mr. Sumner. As they came down the stairs of the Execu- 
tive Mansion, the gentleman remarked, * What is the matter 
With the President ? Do you think he understands you ? ' 'I 



426 WENDKLL PHILLIPS. 

should think he might/ replied Sumner. ' No, he doesn't,' was 
the response ; ' he is in no state to understand anything.' If 
Grant never heard that Sumner took back that courteous pledge 
in the chamber of the White House, it was because his brain re- 
fused to perform its office. He is no judge of the veracity of the 
senator from Massachusetts. 

" General Grant also refers to the action of Mr. Sumner in 
vindication of his friend, Mr. Motley. The case is a grave one. 
It concerns one of the noblest Americans who upheld our fame 
abroad. General Grant intimates that he was no American. I 
knew Lothrop Motley from boyhood. It is very true that, in his 
earlier European life, he drank too deep of the foreign spirit. 
In 1838 and 1840, he was largely European. But on his return 
to this country, ten years before the war, he told me, ' This is 
the greatest country in the world. This is a noble nation to 
work for. It is the noblest people. I have come back from 
Europe, and have relearned the value of America ; have come 
home one of the humblest laborers, to make justice and liberty 
prosper.' It came from his heart. He was made over into a 
most enthusiastic American. I was not surprised when he 
sprang to the helm in the columns of the London Times. It 
was an echo of the old talks on the sidewalks. When Grant 
appointed him to England, he appointed the warmest American 
heart that ever beat. 

" Now, when the senator has been in Mount Auburn for three 
years, when his pen cannot write a denial nor his lips utter a 
rebuke, now, bearing a lie on its lips, comes this accusation, 
that this senator, who never was absent from the Senate one 
hour (Mr. Sumner told me, in the last year of his life, ' I never 
was absent one hour till the last twelvemonth '), was removed 
for negligence. Find me one other man who has not lost 
weeks, or even months, by absence. Mr. Sumner refused op- 
portunities to make hundreds of dollars by lecturing, because 
he was bound by his duties in the Senate. 

" In the quarrel with Motley, the records in the State Depart- 
ment, in black and white, prove that the administration stooped 
to a falsehood. Mr. Fish exhorted Mr. Sumner to take the Brit- 
ish mission, — told him he ought to go to London. Six months 
later the Minister was recalled, on the ground that he had 
leaned too much upon the opinion of a great Northern senator. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 427 

Mr. Sumner's indignant exclamation to Mr. Fish was, ' If Mr. 
Motley's leaning was an unpardonable sin, by what right did 
you sit in my study six months ago, and urge me to go to Eng- 
land, and press my views on the Alabama claims ? ' He said 
then and there, ' Sir, you are a tool of the President for base 
purposes; and this removal is out of spite.' And it is true. 
The testimony is on the files of the diplomatic service itself." ' 

While Mr. Phillips was thus occupied, an effort 
was made to persuade him to accept a Gubernatorial 
nomination,' which he refused to do ; as he did also, 
in 1878, the offer of a nomination for Congress.^ 

There was one subject, delicate and painful, upon 
which Wendell Phillips had felt strongly for half a 
century, — the right treatment and care of the insane. 
Indeed, there had been a time when his own family 
had discussed the expediency of shutting him up in 
a madhouse as an Abolitionist ! '' Without doubt, 
scores of sane men and women whom relatives for 
one reason or another desired to get out of the way 
have been (shall we say still are ?) thrust into strait- 
jackets. Mercenary physicians and loose laws con- 
duce to such rascalities. Feeling all this, persuaded 
of the crying need of vigilance, and taking advan- 
tage of a local stir caused by a flagrant case in the 
neighborhood (his usual cue), Mr. Phillips suggested 
a public meeting to ventilate the theme. It was held 
on February 3d, 1879. ^^ made a thrilling speech, 
demanding the lifting of the veil of secrecy which 
covered the mismanagement of insane retreats. As 
the outcome, the Legislature of Massachusetts was 



^ Vide Dr. Holmes's " Memoir of Motley" for an impartial exposJ 
of the subject as it concerns Motley. 

2 Vide Boston Commonwealth in the fall of 1877. 

3 Vide New York Tribune, November 4th, 1878. 
'* So Mr. Phillips told the writer in 1880. 



428 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

memorialized to pass stringent laws concerning the 
committal of persons alleged to be insane, and to 
secure for them freedom of access, and the right of 
frequent and impartial examinations.' 

Not many months after this action, the tireless 
friend of human kind was called to mourn the death 
of Garrison. ■' The cordial relations between these 
two had been largely resumed. Mr. Phillips felt the 
loss beyond expression. A part of his own being 
went into the cofhn. On Wednesday, May 28th, 
1879, i^ the presence of a churchful of the surviving 
colaborers of the father of American Emancipation, 
and after tender remarks from a number of old com- 
rades, he took the stand to utter the last word. It 
was comprehensive,— the acknowledgment of per- 
sonal indebtedness, analysis, characterization, pathos, 
inspiration ; all in that word.^ His neighbor and 
admirer, Dr. Samuel A. Green, who had heard him 
a hundred times, and in all moods, testifies that it 
was the most exquisite utterance and the most effec- 
tive he ever heard even from Mr. Phillips's lips. 
" Yet," he adds, " it was extempore. After the ad- 
dress I chatted with him in his study and asked him 
about his preparation. He pointed to a piece of paper 
on the table. I took it up. There were four lines of 
points on a slip the size of a small envelope. * How 
could you do it .^ ' I asked. * Ah ! ' was the reply, 
* I was at work on that address for forty years !' " ^ 



^ Vide Boston Daily Advertiser of February 4th, 1879, for a report 
of the meeting. 

* He died in New York City, May 23d. 

' Vide tributes to William Lloyd Garrison at the funeral services, 
May 28ih, 1879, 

^ Repeated to the writer by Dr. Green in September, 1889. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 429 

It was a happy coincidence that the next public 
call that reached the orator, after the funeral of his 
beloved comrade, should have come from their old 
proteg6s. An ominous exodus of the blacks from 
the South was in progress. Despised and skinned 
by the whites, thousands had started they knew not 
whither — anywhere to escape from the perdition 
they were in. The Southerners, unwilling to have 
them remain, yet frightened at the thought of losing 
their workmen, had combined to resist the stampede, 
and were more oppressive in their repressive than 
they had been in their expulsive methods. 

A meeting was held in the Tremont Temple, in 
June, 1879, i^ Boston, to raise money for the assist- 
ance of those who wished to emigrate, and to pro- 
test against any denial of their right to travel. Mr. 
Phillips thundered and lightened in the style of a 
quarter of a century before. To illustrate the con- 
dition of the colored people, he told this story of a 
conversation some one had with one of the escaping 
band, black as night and ignorant as black, — yet 
knowing enough to want to get away ; 

' Where are you going ?" 
Dunno. 

* What are you going for ?" 
'Dunno." 

* What are you going to do when you get there ?** 
' Dunno." 

* Do you expect to improve your condition ?" 

* Couldn't vvuss it nohow." ^ 

A committee was appointed, of which Mr. Phillips 
was one ; a sum of money was raised ; a protest was 



1 Vide New York Tribune ^ June 25th, 1879. 



430 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

sent to Washington ; the Government moved ; but 
the exodus continues, now increasing, now dimin- 
ishing, but always proceeding, to the present day. 
Pharaoh finds it hard to believe in the omnipotence 
of Justice and Love. 

Mr. and Mrs. Phillips passed the summer of 1879 
at Beverly. On July i8th he writes thence to a 
friend ; 

'* Here we are. Tuesday we drove down, seventeen miles, in 
two hours, an east wind favoring the horses. Ann bore it better 
than we feared she would. She enjoys the change of scene and 
folks — and the stillness. ... I shall move 'round and keep 
active. I have already begun pistol practice, and amuse myself 
seeing how many times in twenty I can plant a ball within the 
size of the palm of my hand at twenty paces. I am not ashamed 
of my success. . . . The woods here are fine ; many prefer it to 
Nahant, — which I do not." * 



» To Mrs. E. F. C. (MS.). 



VIII. 

THE RADICAL CLUB. 

In an aristocratic quarter of Boston, in an ola^ 
fashioned, roomy mansion resided the Rev. John T. 
Sargent, small in frame, large in soul. More than 
once we have had occasion to refer to his intimacy 
with Mr. Phillips. His wife was a kindred soul, and 
together they made their home the resort of the 
most gifted and progressive people in iVmerica. 
They were Unitarians in faith, and had domesticated 
under their roof an institution called " The Radical 
Club," which met statedly to discuss theological and 
other questions, — for the most part, it must be con- 
fessed, from an ultra-liberal standpoint. In attend- 
ance on the club one might find, almost any day, 
Emerson, Longfellow, Frothingham, John Weiss, 
Higginson, Holmes, Julia Ward Howe, Henry 
James, — a galaxy of celebrities. 

Mr. Phillips, though not in theological accord 
with them, was a frequent guest of the club, and al- 
ways welcome. It was curious to observe how the 
radical of radicals instantly assumed, when religion 
was upon the tapis, a position of exemplary conserv- 
atism. Many and doughty were the lances he broke 
in these tournaments of mind as the champion of 
orthodoxy. 

On one occasion Mr. Emerson read an essay on 
/* Religion," in which he claimed that Christianity 



432 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

was only one faith more, a modification of Judaism 
or Buddhism, — not ultimate truth, but a well-meant 
approximation, borrowing its ideas from the Greeks, 
from the Chinese, from every quarter. 
Wendell Phillips said, in reply : 

*' He had never met a man of the old faith,— one worthy to 
be taken as a type of anything, —who denied that the religious 
sentiment had found meet and valuable and admirable expres- 
sion in the mythologies ; and he thought that three quarters of 
all the investigations which had been made into Oriental relig- 
ions, translations of their books, inquiries into their history, and 
analyses of their faiths, had been by so-called orthodox men. 
Yale College was as learned in all that matter as Harvard. He 
did not think, therefore, they could claim that the truth, as it 
appeared in those books and in those religions, had not been 
recognized by orthodox men. The point where they separated 
was not there, by any means. Of course, the old religions and 
mythologies grew out of an inspired religious consciousness, to 
a certain extent. He never knew a man who denied it. Every 
intelligent man that he ever met, of any sect, acknowledged the 
contributions to the literature of the West that had been made 
by many of the older faiths ; they had not neglected, they had 
not depreciated, that development. On all this we agree. 
There is a great deal of astronomical speculation in the worlds 
yet that does not interfere with the fact that there is a true 
astronomical method. Because a great many scholars had 
speculated about the stars, did that show that Copernicus and 
Sir Isaac Newton are not upon the right track ? The question 
was, ' Is there any indication anywhere that we have touched, 
even slightly, on absolute truth in any of the mythologies ? ' 
When it was claimed that some parts of the New Testament 
could be found in ^schylus and Sophocles and Epictetus, he 
admitted it ; but, when any man said that the New Testament 
could be found in Confucius and Buddha, he stopped, and de- 
manded the proof. He did not know that any Jew by the name 
of Jesus Christ had said, ' Do unto others as ye would that 
others should do to you ;' but he knew that the best scholarship 
of Europe had scrutinized every line of the record in the most 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 433 

exhaustive manner, until we know, if we know anything, that, 
three hundred years after his death, he was supposed to have 
said it. So far they were on solid ground. It was said that 
Confucius, five hundred years before Christ, said, * Do not do 
unto another as you would not have another do to you.' There 
was a remarkable similarity in these sentences, and very little 
probability that a Jew, in that narrow valley, ever heard of a 
Chinese. How did they know Confucius said it ? ■ All they 
knew about the Chinese was not older than three hundred and 
fifty years. If they could prove to him that, three hundred years 
after the death of Confucius, he was supposed to have uttered 
those words, he would believe it, but not now ; and he did not 
give any more weight to the legends about Buddha. No story 
forty years old could be relied upon without scrutiny. 

" But suppose it was admitted that Confucius and Buddha did 
say just what Christ did .'' Steam and water were the same ele- 
ments ; but water would not move a locomotive ; steam would. 
The Sermon on the Mount might be paralleled in Sophocles ; 
they might find a great deal in Confucius : but one was water, 
the other steam ; one had moved the world, the other had not. 
The proof that there was something unusual there was seen in 
the results. India had all the intellectual brilliancy that Greece 
had ; she touched all the problems, exhausted all the intellectual 
debate, thousands of years ago ; and there she lies to-day. On 
the other hand, here was Europe. She had made marvellous 
progress ; and, with the single exception of race, there was no 
element mixed in the European caldron to distinguish it from 
the Asiatic. Unless they were going to lay on this distinction 
of race the whole difference between European and Asiatic de- 
velopment, they had nothing but Christianity to account for it. 
It seemed to him that it was wiser to claim for Christianity the 
largest share in the merit of European civilization. 

" Everybody knew that the Chinese had hospitals before 
Christ, it we are to trust history ; everybody knew all about 
their progress in civilization ; but they make no progress to-day. 
The bee could make an eight-sided cell better than Brunei could 
make it, but the bee can make nothing else. The Chinese had 
not advanced for a thousand years. They had every spring- 
board and fulcrum and motive-power to go ahead, and had not, 
Europe had constantly gone ahead. We had saved all we had 



434 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

got, and gained more. We had taken the classic and the Roman 
civilization, — taken their law. their ethics, their religious ideas, 
their idea of popular rights,— and we had carried them on. 
Europe was the hand and brain of the world to-day ; the pioneer, 
the constructor, the administrator of the world to-day ; and 
there was nothing underlying her to make her so, except race 
and Christianity. Other portions of the world had had the same 
intellect. Tocqueville had told us, in his report to the French 
Institute, that there was no theory or dream of social science 
ever debated in Europe that could not be found in the Hindoo 
discussions. The difference was not caused by a lack of in- 
tellect. Here was a fact to be explained, and it could not be 
brushed away by saying this man and the other made a very 
near approach. No doubt that was so : nobody ever denied it. 
God never left any race, nor any man, nor any time, without 
Himself ; and these twilights, and approaches to noon, were 
seen everywhere in history. But they had got, at last, the 
Copernican theory ; and no fact appeared that it did not explain. 
They had got, at last, the true chemical analysis ; and that went 
down, and weighed the atoms. They explained all new dis- 
coveries. The reason why he believed in Sir Isaac Newton was, 
that he gave the key to every fact, discovered no matter where. 
Sir Thomas Browne could tell a great many beautiful dreams 
about astronomy, but they did not explain the facts. Christi- 
anity had faced the facts and explained them. He claimed, 
therefore, that there was something essentially different in it 
from the religious experience of other races." ^ 

At another sitting, the Rev. W. H. Channing read 
a paper on " The Christian Name." When the dis- 
cussion began Mr. Phillips remarked : 

" Christianity is a great moral power, the determining force 
of our present civilization, as of past steps in the same direc- 
tion. Jesus is the divine type who has given His peculiar form 
to the modern world. Speculations as to why and how may 
differ, but we see the fact. We cannot rub out history. Europe 
shows a type of human character not paralleled anywhere else. 



' " Reminiscences of the Radical Club," pp. 9-13, 15, 18, 19. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 435 

The intellect of Greece centred around power and beauty ; that 
of Rome around legal justice. The civilization of modern 
Europe was inspired by a great moral purpose. Imperfect as it 
was, and limited in many ways, the religious element there had 
steadily carried those nations forward. The battle for human 
rights was finally fought on a Christian plane. Unbelief has 
written books, but it never lifted a million men into a united 
struggle. The power that urged the world forward came from 
Christianity. Mr. Channing has explained to us its origin. I 
look at its results, and they lead to the same conclusion. He 
claims to be Christian. So do I. The best part of the life of 
Europe may be traced to Christianity. 

" The religious literature of Asia has been compared with the 
Christian Scriptures. The comparison is not just. That liter- 
ature has many merits, and contains scattered sayings and pre- 
cepts of great excellence ; but there are heaps of chaff in that, 
and in the writings of the early Christian Fathers ; none in the 
Gospels and Epistles. Of the mediaeval writings, one half was 
useless. Of the boasted works of Confucius, seven tenths must 
be winnowed out, to find what the average reason of mankind 
would respect." ' 

One day, John Weiss spoke on " Heart In Re- 
ligion," and contended that Jesus was effeminate. 
Whereupon Mr. Phillips said : 

" You speculate as to whether Jesus was a masculine char- 
acter. Look at the men who have learned of Him most closely, 
— at Paul and Luther and Wesley. Were they effeminate ? yet 
the disciple is but a faint reflection of his Master. The char- 
acter from which came the force which has been doing battle 
erer since with wrong and falsehood and error was nothing less 
than masculine ; but sentiment is the toughest thing in the 
world, — nothing else is iron." ' 

The Rev. Dr. Hedge punctuated a session with 
an essay on ** Spinoza," "who," he said, "sup- 
poses a single and a whole substance, comprising all 

' '* Reminiscences of the Radical Club," pp. 76, 77. 
2 Jb., pp. 147, 148, 



43^ WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

that is, and of which all phenomena, all finite sub- 
stances, are modes. Therefore he is said to have 
turned the devil out of the world." 

Wendell Phillips hereupon ** protested against our 
judgment of men by their theories. Theoretically 
Calvinism dispenses with works ; but where do we 
find a higher standard of morals or better works 
than among the Calvinists ? While human nature 
is capable of a feeling of remorse — as if, having a 
will, one might have done right and had done wrong 
— we shall not be able to put aside a sense of per- 
sonal responsibility, or to turn the devil out of doors. 
Spinoza gives no theory which explains away the 
fact of suffering, and he had seen suffering which he 
felt sure was unmitigated evil. ' * ' 

Once ** Quakerism" was under consideration. 
Mr. Phillips said : 

'* Quakerism showed the limitations of human nature. A re- 
ligious genius arises, and bears the precise testimony needed by 
the world at that time ; but if he tries to organize or perpetuate 
himself, he fails. George Fox was a great religious genius. 
William Penn was a trimmer, who, if he had lived in New Eng- 
land in our time, would have been a dough-face. 

*' The decline of Quakerism began early. Josiah Foster in 
that denomination was a pope. Elizabeth Fry was a noble 
woman ; but in religion was a narrow-minded bigot, who would 
not stay in the house with Lucretia Mott because the latter did 
not believe in the Trinity. George Fox was motion. When he 
ceased to move Quakerism, it fell back. It has not continued 
the aggressive attitude which he took. Quakerism has taken 
care of its own poor, but has never combated pauperism in the 
community at large. 

" Fox shows us how little we owe to colleges. The great re- 
ligious ideas of modern Europe all came from the people. In- 



* " Reminiscences of the Radical Club," p. i6o. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 437 

tellect led by scholars opposes progress. If Fox were here 
among us, he would be as radical now as he was then, and 
would be again imprisoned as a disturber of society." ^ 

Oliver Wendell Holmes, on a certain morning-, 
read an essay on "Jonathan Edwards," dwelling 
with emphasis upon that theologian's tenet of " in- 
fant damnation" as the key to his system. 

The Rev. Dr. Bartol, who was in the chair, called 
on Mr. Phillips, who remarked : 

" The picture drawn by Dr. Holmes, though truthful an(^ 
accurate so far as it goes, cannot be full or complete. As a 
whole, it cannot be just to Edwards : there must be other sides, 
which would soften and redeem it ; other doctrines, that explain 
and fill out the full religious life and character, and justify the 
profound and loving respect our fathers had for him. Else how 
can we account for the great fact of New England, which is th« 
outcome of his and similar pulpits ? 

*' No one doubts that a large majority of the New England 
pulpits, one hundred years ago, sympathized with, and sustained, 
Edwards. These horrible doctrines, which Dr. Holmes shocked 
us with, were not Edwards's individual and singular views, but 
the common faith of New England. Now, religion and theo- 
logical doctrines are great factors in forming character. If the 
pulpit of New England taught only, or mainly, these hateful, 
narrow, inhuman, and degrading doctrines, — if such was the 
character of its teaching. — whence came this generous, public- 
spirited, energetic, hopeful, broad, humane, self-respectful, 
independent, and free-thought New England, ready for every 
good work, and willing for every necessary sacrifice ? 

" We must have a theory broad enough to cover all the facts. 
It used to be said, that ' He who makes religion twelve, and 
the world thirteen, is no true New Englander.' His religion 
was three quarters of a Yankee. What you gentlemen here call 
' free religion ' and ' liberal Christianity ' is of very recent 
growth, and of still very narrow influence. But character is oi 
slow growth. Any theory which narrows and degrades the Nevi» 



1 •« 



Reminiscences of the Radical Club," pp. 178, 179, 



438 WENDELL PIIILLir^. 

England pulpit of the eighteenth century fails to account for the 
community which grew up under it." 

To one who suggested as an explanation that our 
fathers never really believed such doctrines, Mr. 
Phillips replied : 

" It will hardly do to maintain that the hard-headed and practi- 
cal Yankee, so keen and ready witted in affairs, so free and bold 
in civil life, the world's intellectual pioneer, did not know or 
understand what he believed, in — to him — the most important 
matter of all, his religion. Four generations passed over the 
stage, and left us this Commonwealth, their creation, — sober, 
painstaking, serious, earnest men. We cannot accept the theory 
which represents their religion as carelessly taken up, loosely 
held, and only half understood. Great jurists, practical states- 
men, profound scholars, liberal founders of academy, college, 
and hospital, boldly searching the world over for means to per> 
feet institutions on which the world now models itself, — were 
these minds crippled by absurd dogmas, worldlings without 
faith, or hypocrites afraid to avow their real belief.'' True phil- 
osophy never accepts such theories to explain history. It is 
more natural and philosophical to suppose that the sketch we 
have listened to, admirable as it is, has not given all the sides 
of the picture." 

Dr. Bartol suggested that Edwards's parish repu- 
diated him : after twenty years listening to him, 
they voted against him ten to one. 

*' Mr. Phillips replied, ' That argument proves too much. 
We have just exhausted language in praising the eminent Chris- 
tian spirit and untold influence of Dr. W. E. Channing. But 
we all know that, after Channing had preached twenty years to 
men who idolized him, they mobbed him for his Anti-Slavery 
ideas, and refused him the use of his own church for the funeral 
services of the Abolitionist Follen, Channing's most intimate 
and valued friend. Channing failed as thoroughly, forty years 
ago, in teaching his church justice and humanity, as Edwards 
did, a hundred years ago, in bringing his hearers to relish the 
idea of infant damnation. It will not do for Unitarians in 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 439 

Boston to throw that Northampton vote in Edwards's face. 
Northampton never mobbed Edwards for his infant damnation, 
as Boston did Channing for his Anti-Slavery, in Faneuil 
Hall."' ' 

These are, of course, disjointed utterances, the 
disjecta membra of running- discussion. But they in- 
dicate Mr. Phillips's views. It was well understood, 
among his friends, that he believed in the orthodox 
creed, in the orthodox sense. 



* " Reminiscences of the Radical Club," pp. 371-73. 



IX. 

LYCEUM EXPERIENCES. 

The life of one who makes a business of lecturing 
is not easy. The popular conception is to the con- 
trary. We see a brilliantly lighted hall, a well- 
dressed audience, an orator, who, as he steps to the 
desk in faultless attire, is received with applause ; 
and we think, "What a charming career!" The 
separation from home, the weary travel, the broken 
sleep, the annoying delays or interruptions, the dis- 
comfort of different and indifferent hotels, the expo- 
sure to dj^spepsia from the mixed diet, the dealing 
with all kinds of men, the being out in all sorts of 
weather, — these are prosaic facts which are hardly 
offset by an hour's experience in that more or less 
attractive hall. 

Mr. Phillips was a (peripatetic) philosopher, and 
extracted what of comfort and fun he might from it 
all, though conscious enough of the hardships of the 
life. Moving about as he did, he adapted and ad- 
justed himself to it. He was a great tea-drinker — a 
Ua-tot3\er ; English breakfast tea being his favorite 
beverage. This he carried in his travelling-bag, and 
made or had made always and everywhere. He also 
made an inseparable companion of a large gray 
shawl, which he habitually spread between the 
sheets of the bed and wrapped himself in — thus 
avoiding the colds and rheumatism that come from 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 44I 

northeast chambers and damp bed-clothes. Always 
abstemious, he was specially so before speaking, his 
usual supper at such times consisting of three raw 
eggs and as many cups of tea. 

The orator's repertoire was encyclopaedic. It 
embraced a vast list : Travel, like " Street Life in 
Europe ;" science, like " The Lost Arts ;" current 
politics, like " The Times," or " The Lesson of the 
Hour ;" reform, like " Temperance," ** Labor," 
''Woman," "The Indians," or, in earlier days, 
" Anti-Slavery ;" controversy, like " Inferences from 
Froude ;" political economy, like " Finance ;" polit- 
ical philosophy, Hke " Agitation," which was for 
many years his favorite college commencement ad- 
dress ; education, like " Training ;" legal topics, 
like ** Law and Lawyers," and " Courts and Jails ;" 
foreign matters, like ** The Irish Question ;" lec- 
tures of polite interest, like *' The Press ;" biog- 
raphy, like "Toussaint," " O'Connell," "Sir 
Harry Vane," and ** Sumner ;" religion, like " Chris- 
tianity a Battle, not a Dream." Perhaps no speaker 
of his day, or any day, treated a greater variety of 
topics, or with more even excellence, than Wendell 
Phillips ; so that it was difficult to say in which de- 
partment he was most at home. Such was his mag- 
netism of manner and witchery of style that he could 
talk entertainingly about a broom-handle. The 
speaker was always interesting, whether the subject 
was or not. Men and women went to hear him 
without interest in the theme, often predetermined 
to dislike him, and sat breathless through the hour, 
and were amazed when he stopped to find that sixty 
or ninety minutes had elapsed. 

Another peculiarity of his lectures was that he 



442 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

never spoke merely to amuse. However light and 
airy the music, there was always a sub-bass of moral 
purpose. He was even more instructive than enter- 
taining. No one ever had a higher conception of 
obligation. In his view, influence was a trust, to be 
exerted, in Lord Bacon's phrase, '* for the glory of 
God and the relief of man's estate." 

As illustrative of his experiences, we open a bud- 
get of his letters, written on the road, at various 
times, and to different friends. 

To a young lady who was a kind of protege, of 
whom Mrs. Phillips was fond, and who, in his ab- 
sence, ministered to his wife, thus making it possible 
for him to be away, — he writes from Illinois, " in 
the cars," and with a lead pencil : 

** What can I do for you, in return for all your kindness to 
Ann, my dear child ? Thanks seem to me very poor pay. Ann 
has spoken of how much you have been to her, in her letters. 
It is a great comfort to me to have you able to be so much to 
her. . . . The weather is dull — only two days since I left that I 
have seen the sun. Rain, clouds, damp, mud, and grim heavens. 
Still the audiences are large. 

" Since my letter from Chicago, I have been shaken in omni- 
buses and hacks to a terrible degree. The mud has been fear- 
ful. And then the sudden quick freeze, and it is iron in deep 
ruts — horrible to ride on. I rejoice that dear old Boston (how 
I love those streets !) has no such iniiictions." 

To the same friend he gives a description of one 
of the oil towns in Pennsylvania : 

*' Here I am in an oil town — mud over the hubs of the wheels ; 
literally, one horse was smothered in it : the queerest crowd of 
men, with trousers tucked in their boots ; no privacy — hotels all 
one crowd — chambers mere thoroughfares, — everybody passing 
through at will. And here I must be all Sunday, unless some 
train will carry me on in the direction I wish. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 443 

*' I find some of the Boston people. Everybody here is mak- 
ing money : the first place I have found where this is the case. 
Explanation — they have just struck oil !" 

Again, the next month, he writes : 

" It has been intensely cold out here. I have been in t'.ie 
smaller towns, and have had poor hotels and a generally hard 
time — rushed from one train to another, and puffed from station 
to station. ... In eleven days of travel I have slept in a regular 
bed but four nights. Still I have been fortunate in filling every 
engagement, and ' Sumner ' has been the favorite subject. 

" In Milwaukee I was at the ' Plunkington,' where I had a 
fine suite of rooms, — bath, chamber, parlor with pier-glass ten 
feet high and five feet broad ; all the rooms opening into a cen- 
tral hall. Nothing showy, but just comfortable." 

From Philadelphia, in the midst of absorbing social 
and professional duties, he is thoughtful of a friend 
in Boston who has artistic tastes, and writes : 

" Dear Eleanor : Don't fail to go and see the pictures 
Williams and Everett are exhibiting. They are eminently worth 
studying. 

" Opposite, as you mount the stairs, is one of three gems. It 
is a weird, lonesome desert. Joseph and Mary are travelling 
across it. He has fallen asleep on the sand. Mary and the 
baby Christ are lying in the arms of the Sphinx, also asleep. 
It is very original. Above it is another by the same artist 
{.Xferson, I think : there is a scrap lying on the table telling you 
n'^out him and it) ; a tall Egyptian girl — handsome ; but the 
vn'ue of the canvas lies in the wonderful cloth. You can hardly 
believe her dress, Indian cotton, is not real. And her gird'e, a 
Roman scarf, is so true ; not too highly colored, but the thing 
itself. Then as you staiid looking on your right is a picture of 
a dozen sailors, taking their * nooning ' sleep — wonderfully life- 
like and happily grouped, and telling the story of labor and rest 
—admirable ! It is worth an hour's study. Be sure and carry 
your glasses." 

From Davenport, la, he writes the Rev. Mr. 
Sargent : 



444 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

** Dear John : I wish I had your sunbeam pen and a dainty 
sheet of scented paper to write this letter with and on. Its im- 
port demands both. 

'* I, the traveller, the * elderly gentleman,' have been — kissed ! 
in Illinois ! Put that in your pipe and smoke it, if you can with- 
out its choking your envious soul ! Yes, kissed ! ! on a public 
platform, in front of a depot, the whole world envying me. 
Don't you wish you could be invited out to such a glorious land ? 
' Who did it ? ' do you ask. I am not sure your jealous heart de- 
serves to know. . . . But I will be merciful. It was an old 
man of seventy-three years — a veteran Abolitionist, a lovely 
old saint. In the early days of the cause we used to kiss each 
other like the early Christians ; and when he saw me he resumed 
the habit. 

" Dare 1, after such a communication, ask to be remembered 
to your wife and household .?" 

On January ist, 1879, he writes to Mr. and Mrs. 
Sargent : 

' The happiest of New Years to you both. May the sunniest 
blue sky overarch all your course. Health, peace, comfort and 
troops of friends be with you and 'round you ! This is written 
on a snowy night, before a soft coal fire in Erie, Pa. 

" Ask Ann to show you my description : — Six feet in my 
socks — sixty-eight years old — and with * squirrel tails ' for 
whiskers." 

He writes to a gentleman in Boston who was 
thought to lesemble him, with mock solemnity, as 
follows, from Cleveland, O. : 

" Dear Sir : You know how I once admired your modesty 
when you seemed pleased with being taken for me. Allow me 
to minister to your still further growth in that Christian grace. 

" The other evening, before my lecture, a wild, frowzy, hag- 
gard, uncombed Yankee came to me and said : * Often, sir, 
when I am sitting in a tavern, men will walk 'round me three or 
four times and then swoop down and say, *' Mr. Phillips, J 
believer' ' 

" Now, you remember enough ot the mathematics they pound- 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 445 

ed into you at college to know that ' things that are equal to a 
third are equal to each other.' So you may comfort yourself with 
the reflection that you resemble my gaunt Yankee double ! 

" With sympathy, 

"Your 'Double." 

Mr. Phillips was once invited to attend a large 
meeting in a country town, where several church 
choirs were to give a musical entertainment ; and 
they wanted him to deliver an appropriate address. 
He declined, saying that he knew nothing of music, 
could not sing, and did not know one note from an- 
other. The Committee of Arrangements implored 
and insisted, again and again. At last, overborne 
by their entreaties, he amiably (he would have said 
weakly) consented ; relying, probably, on some un- 
foreseen inspiration. His faith was justified. As he 
sat in the pulpit, surrounded by clergymen whose 
choirs were discoursing sacred music, and wonder- 
ing what he should say, he spied, among the singers, 
a colored man. Instantly the inspiration came. 
The moral influence of music, its power to bring into 
harmony human souls, was his theme. 

The county papers praised his address, and his 
wife laughingly told him that he had obtained ap- 
plause on false pretences. 

An invitation to go to Vermont, to lecture upon 
treeSy he could not be induced to accept. He said 
that he knew an oak from an elm ; but that was 
about the extent of his knowledge upon that subject. 

Mr. Phillips went one night to lecture in a country 
town. His subject had not been announced. The 
Committee asked him how many lectures he had 
brought. *' All of them," was the answer, " here ;" 
tapping his forehead. The Committee could not agree 



446 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

which they would have, and referred the decision to 
the audience. They, too, were divided, some pre- 
ferring " Toussaint L'Ouverture," while others 
voted for the "Lost Arts." Finally an old man 
arose and said: " S'pose we have both." Then 
addressing the orator, who sat an amused listener, 
he continued, " Couldn't you give us both?" The 
humor of the situation, and the Yankee sharpness 
which prompted a request for two lectures for one 
fee, amused Mr. Phillips. He consented and gave 
both, winding from one to the other, though the 
subjects were totally unrelated, with such deftness 
that it was impossible to detect where they were 
joined, and they seemed parts of a connected whole. 
The audience retired greatly pleased, and feeling 
that they had got their money's worth ! 

Wherever he went autograph-hunters, album in 
hand, lay in wait for him. Mr. Phillips good-na- 
turedly responded and (as he said) " made his mark" 
in a thousand places. His favorite autographs 
were ; 

" Count that day lost 
Whose slow descending sun 
Sees from thy hand 
No worthy action done." 

To this he usually added : 

" John Brown taught these lines to each of his children : 



" ' Peace, if possible. 
Justice at any rate. 



• >> 



Or this by Mrs. Ellen Sturgis Hooper : 

'* I slept and dreamed that life was beauty. 
I waked— to find that life was duty. 
Was then thy dream a shadowy lie ? 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 447 

Toil on, sad heart, courageously, 
And thou shalt find that dream to be 
A noonday light, and truth to thee." 

And these lines by Lowell, his favorite of all : 

'* Truth forever on the scaffold. 
Wrong forever on the throne ; 
But that scaffold sways the future, 
And behind the dim unknown 
Standeth God within the shadow, 
Keeping watch above his own.*' 

With the possible exception of Mr. John B. Gough, 
Mr. Phillips travelled longer and more constantly 
than any other public speaker in America. Yet 
though always on the cars, in the steamboat, or, in 
earlier days, in the stage-coach, he never met with 
a serious accident — striking proof of the comparative 
safety of travel. 

But — easy work ? Ask those who know ! 



BOOK IV. 
EVENING 

1880-1884. 



It 



I. 

STILL CONTENDING. 

In the nature of the case, a self-governed com- 
munity can permanently exist only on the basis of 
virtue and intelligence. Intemperance is the nega- 
tion of both. Hence, like every thoughtful observer, 
Mr. Phillips, as we know, hated grog and grog- 
shops. Always active for temperance, as his life 
proceeded he redoubled his exertions. He was 
never too busy to come up to its help against the 
mighty. Thus, in February, 1880, he spoke in the 
State House, in Boston, against license : 

" We don't care what a man does in his own parlor. He may- 
drink his champagne or whiskey, and we don't care. But the 
moment a man opens his shop, and sells, we will interfere. 
The moment he undertakes to sell liquor, the State has an abso- 
lute and unlimited right to step in. The question demands the 
extreme use of this power. Every man familiar with the execu- 
tion of the law knows that three fourths of crime is due to rum, 
which fills your prisons and almshouses, and burdens your gal- 
lows. In every case in Great Britain and this country where the 
rum-shops have been closed, freedom from crime, freedom from 
taxation, follows. The law is unchanging : no liquor, no crime ; 
no liquor, no tax. Wherever the English blood flows, it would 
seem that the stimulus of the stomach had supreme power. 
There are over two hundred laws of this Legislature endeavor- 
ing to curb this devil, but every one knows that we have never 
succeeded in curbing it for a moment. All over the State you 
will find whole towns that have been sold for a rum-debt. 
There was no law in the city on that sunny afternoon in October 



4S2 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

when Garrison was trampled underfoot. So it is to-day. There 
has not been a mayor for forty years who would enforce a liquor 
law, and there won't be for forty years to come. There is not 
a Republican to-day who can look into another Republican's 
face, and think of the license law, without laughing. It is but 
the tub thrown to the whale. Prohibition means something. 
License has been tried in every shape. As long ago as 1837 the 
fifteen-gallon law was tried, and numerous other devices have 
been tried since ; but we have never gained a point. Every 
man who walks the street, knows that, whenever we have had 
a prohibitory law, there has been an immediate change in the 
amount of drinking. Under the license law, sometimes less 
arrests are reported ; but there is nothing so easy to make lie 
as figures. If a poor man get his wheel caught in a rut, there 
will seven policemen rush to his rescue ; but let there be a 
drunken row, you won't find a policeman within forty rods. 
There are four thousand rum-shops in Boston ; and taking these 
four thousand, and their four thousand best customers, you will 
have eight thousand votes, — a larger number than decides any 
election. You can't execute a license law." ^ 

The Rev. Dr. Bartol, in the pulpit of the " West 
(Unitarian) Church," had preached a series of ser- 
mons in the spring of 1880, in which he advocated 
moderate drinking, declared it " untrue that total 
abstinence is requisite either for self-protection or 
for exainple's sake," and branded prohibition as 
"fanaticism." In a pointed letter, which was 
widely published, Mr. Phillips contrasted the teach- 
ings of Dr. Bartol with those of his predecessor, the 
Rev. Dr. Charles Lowell, father of the poet, James 
Russell Lowell, who had recommended total absti- 
nence. He adds : 

" I wonder if the present generation of West Church sheep 
are intelligent enough to perceive the difference between these 



^ FV</i? Boston Commonwealth y spring of 1880. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 453 

two pulpits. And, if so, which do they look up to with the 
better satisfaction ? 

** Some temperance-men are surprised and indignant at what 
they consider Dr. Bartol's prostitution of the Liberal pulpit. 
Such men forget the history of the temperance movement in 
Boston. When Rev. John Pierpont, forty years ago, returned 
from the East, he stated, in his pulpit in HoUis Street, that the 
first thing he saw there (in Smyrna, I believe) was a barrel of 
New England rum, — N. E. RUM burned into its head in large 
capitals. He made this the text for an earnest and eloquent 
agitation of the temperance question. The richest parishioners 
were rum-makers and rum-sellers : their rum was then stored, 
I think, in the very cellar of his church. I will not mention 
their names : their children continue the manufacture and the 
traffic. They set to work, by reducing his salary, refusing to 
pay one dollar of it, mortgaging the church for heavy debt, and 
by every means, to drive Pierpont from the pulpit. Finding 
this ineffectual, they announced their determination to buy up 
every pew that could be had, and thus, securing a majority of 
votes, dismiss him from his charge. Francis Jackson, a name 
always to be written by Bostonians in letters of gold, and the 
late venerable Samuel May, led the temperance-men in resisting 
this plot. They succeeded in form ; they vindicated Mr. Pier- 
pont on every trial, leaving no smell of fire on his garments ; 
but they could not 'hold the fort.* In fact, rum triumphed. 
The wealthy rum-sellers of the city, whether attending in 
HoUis Street or not, bought pews there, — pews they never used, 
— and finally obliged Mr. Pierpont to agree to vacate his pulpit. 
During the seven years of this hard-fought battle between the 
penniless, eloquent, and devoted apostle in the pulpit and the 
wealthy rum-sellers in the pews, the Unitarian clergy of Suffolk 
County gave the public to understand that they renounced all 
ministerial fellowship with Mr. Pierpont, never exchanged with 
him, or extended to him professional recognition or courtesy. 
With two or three exceptions (Rev. J. T. Sargent, Dr. Gannett, 
and one or two others — Mr. Theodore Parker was not then 
preaching in Boston), all the Liberal clergy shut him from their 
pulpits. In their last letter to Mr. Pierpont, the rum-sellers 
taunted him with the fact that hardly one of his clerical brethren 
in Boston would exchange with him. And, in his letter of fare- 



454 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

well to the Unitarian Association, Mr. Pierpont refers to tliis de- 
sertion, and affirms that this repudiation of him by his brother 
clergymen was the special thing which made it impossible for 
him to remain in the Hollis Street pulpit ; and, further, his cer- 
tain knowledge that this course of conduct toward him was 
adopted, on their part, on purpose, and with the intention, to 
drive him from that pulpit. 

" Mr. Bartol, therefore, does not prostitute the Liberal pul- 
pit ; although one might sigh for the purer Gospel Lowell 
preached in the West Church. Judged by the example and con- 
duct of the vast majority of the Liberal clergy of Boston for the 
last forty years, such sermons as Dr. Bartol has of late delivered 
are just the preaching for which the Liberal pulpit was created 

and is sustained. 

•• Wendell Phillips." ^ 

The summer of 1880 Mr. and Mrs. Phillips spent 
in Princeton, Mass., whence he writes under date of 
June 23d : 

" We are in comfortable quarters — view everywhere and over 
everything. ... I laze and ride on horseback, exploring the 
drives. In one ride I can see Monadnock, twenty-five miles 
north, and the blue hills of Milton, forty-five east. The rest of 
the time I sleep. I v^^eigh one hundred and seventy-five pounds, 
and don't feel as old as I am. . . . The town is full of famous 
men and fashionable women." ^ 

To another correspondent, he gives, July 21st, an 
amusing description of affairs : 

" Up in the clouds here, only coming down to the lower world 
once a week, a letter from you would be cheerful at any time. 
But now it is rain, rain, rain, rain — Wachusett has hardly taken 
off its night-cap for a week. In such dampness a dry letter from 
you (if that were possible) would be a blessing. Fancy, then, 
when on one of the most drenching of all afternoons, I sailed 



' Quoted in Austin's " Life and Times of Wendell Phillips," pp. 
326 sqq. 
''' Letter to Mrs. E. F. C. (ms.). 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 455 

down to the village and swam back bringing your pleasant note 
in my teeth, as the Spanish fellow (Camoens, was it T' did his 
poems. . . . Did you or your wife put that good story in the 
journals of a fellow who offered to a young lady, and she said : 
' You scare me ! ' Modestly sitting quiet the beau forbore to 
disturb her for ten minutes, when she cried out — ' Scare Me 
agaifi / ' 

" I have kept awake thus far, but it is an effort, as the quiet 
is so profound. A passer-by is an event. The only noise ever 
made is by the hens. The only thing that ever happens is when 
we miss the cat. 

" But we always keep awake at the sunsets— they are splen- 
did !" ' 

These restful days and nights put the orator's 
body and mind in training for the fall and winter. 
And the work he did made it clear that his vigor 
was unimpaired. In fact, two of the most effective 
blows he ever dealt were struck straight from the 
shoulder in 1881. 

The first was at the Rev. Dr. Howard Crosby, of 
New York City, the Goliath of moderate drinking, 
who in January went to Boston and gave a lecture 
which he called " A Calm View of Temperance," 
but which was " calm" only by that figure of speech 
which names a thing by its opposite — like the Abbe 
Hue's account of a pestiferous hole in China, sacred 
to dirt and tenanted by vermin, but called by Chinese 
pride, " The hotel of the Beatitudes." Dr. Crosby 
was then Chancellor of the New York University. 
He had long been a foremost authority in Greek 
grammar. He claimed that he had patented a sys- 
tem (high license) which would prove more effective 
for temperance in a twelvemonth than prohibition 



^ Letter to Rev. J. T. Sargent (MS.). 



45^ WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

would or could in a lifetime. The doctor certainly 
created a sensation ; and, aside from the reckless 
manner in which he flung about the roughest words 
in the dictionary, made as able a showing as his side 
allowed. 

The clergy of Boston invited Mr. Phillips to re- 
ply ; which he did on January 24th, in the Tremont 
Temple, before a vast assembly, with annihilating 
effect. The subject in controversy is, and promises 
to be, of living interest. Hence, a somewhat full 
synopsis of Mr. Phillips's remarks should seem im- 
portant. Imprimis^ the orator gave a careful and 
honest analysis of the New Yorker's arguments, 
which he answered seriatim. The points are indi- 
cated in the following extracts : 

" Dr. Crosby says ' total abstinence is contrary to revealed 
religion.' What is total abstinence ? It is abstaining from the 
use of intoxicating liquors as a beverage ourselves and agreeing 
with others to do so. How is this contrary to revealed religion .? 
Can any one cite a text in the Bible or a principle laid down 
there which forbids it ? Of course not ; no one pretends that he 
can. But Dr. Crosby's argument is that Jesus drank intoxicating 
wine and allowed it to others. There is no proof that He ever 
did drink intoxicating wine. . But let that pass, and suppose, 
for the sake of the argument, that He did. What then ? To do 
what Jesus never did, or to refuse to do what He did — are such 
acts necessarily * contrary to revealed religion* ? Let us 
see. 

" Jesus rode upon an * ass and a colt, the foal of an ass.' We 
find it convenient to use railways. Are they * contrary to re- 
vealed religion* ? Jesus never married, neither did most of 
His apostles. Is marriage, therefore, ' contrary to revealed re- 
ligion* ? Jesus allowed a husband to put away his wife if she 
had committed adultery, he himself being judge and executioner. 
We forbid him to do it, and make him submit to jury trial and 
a judge's decision. Are such divorce laws, therefore, ' contrary 
to revealed religion' ? Jesus said to the person guilty of adul-. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 457 

tery : ' Go and sin no more.' We send such sinners to the State 
prison. Are our laws punishing adultery, therefore, ' contrary 
to revealed religion' ? There were no women at the Last Sup- 
per. We admit them to it. Is this ' contrary to revealed re- 
ligion' ? We see therefore that Christians may, in altered cir- 
cumstances, do some things Jesus never actually did, and that 
their so doing does not necessarily contravene His example ; 
nor, unless it violates "Cao. principles He taught, does it tend to 
undermine Christianity. 

" Now, there is a class of biblical scholars and interpreters 
who do assert that, wherever wine is referred to in the Bible 
with approbation, it is unfermented wine. Of this class of men 
Dr. Crosby says, ' Their learned ignorance is splendid ;' they 
are 'inventors of a theory of magnificent daring;' they 'use 
false texts * and ' deceptive arguments ;' * deal dishonestly with 
the Scriptures ;' ' beg the question, and build on air ; ' their 
theory is a ' fable ' born of ' falsehoods,' supported by ' Scrip- 
ture twisting and riggling ;' their arguments are ' cobwebs,' 
their zeal outstrips their judgment, and they plan to ' under- 
mine the Bible.' Who are these daring, ridiculous, and illogi- 
cal sinners ? As I call them up in my memory, the first one 
who comes to me is Moses Stuart, of Andover, whose lifelong 
study of the Bible, and profound critical knowledge of both its 
languages, place him easily at the head of all American com- 
mentators. ' Moses Stuart's Scripture View of the Wine Ques- 
tion ' was the ablest contribution, thirty years ago, to this claim 
about unfermented wine, and still holds its place unanswered 
and unanswerable. By his side stands Dr. Nott, the head of 
Union College, with the snows of ninety winters on his brow. 
Around them gather scores of scholars and divines, on both 
sides of the Atlantic. In our day Taylor Lewis gives to the 
American public, with his scholarly indorsement, the exhaus- 
tive commentary by Dr. Lees on every text in the Bible which 
speaks of wine, — a work of sound learning, widest research, 
and fairest argument. The ripe scholarship, long study of the 
Bible, and critical ability of these men, entitle them to be con- 
sidered experts on this question. In a matter of Scripture inter- 
pretation, it would be empty compliment to say that Dr. Crosby 
is worthy to loose the latchet of their shoes. Now, the truth is, 
the only * castle built in the air ' in this matter, is the baseless 



45^ WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

idea that the temperance movement uses dishonest arguments, 
or wrests the Scripture, because it maintains, that, where the 
drinking of wine as an article of diet is mentioned in the Bible 
with approbation, ii7ifermented wine is meant. The fact is, 
there are scholars of repute on both sides of the question. But 
we do not claim too much when we say that the weight of 
scholarly authority is on our side. 

" It is, indeed, mournful to look back and notice how uni- 
formly narrow-minded men, hide-bound in the bark of tradition, 
conventionalism, and prejudice, have thrown the Bible in the 
way of every forward step the race has ever made. When the 
Reformation claimed that every Christian man was his own 
priest and entitled to read the Bible for himself the cry was : 
' You are resisting and undermining the Bible.' 

" One of the best proofs that the Bible is indeed a divine book 
is, that it has outlived the misrepresentations of its narrow and 
bigoted friends. 

" But look at it a moment. The New Testament is a small 
book, and may be read in an hour or two. It is not a code of 
laws, but the example of a life and a suggestion of principles. 
It would be idle to suppose that it could describe in detail, spe- 
cifically meet every possible question, and solve every dit^culty 
that the changing and broadening life of two or three thousand 
years might bring forth. The progressive spirit of each age has 
found in it just the inspiration and help it sought. But when 
timid, narrow, and short-sighted men claimed such exclusive 
ownership in it that they refused to their growing fellows the 
use of its broad, underlying principles, and thus demanded to 
have new wine put into old bottles, of course the bottles burst 
and their narrow-surface Bible became discredited ; but the real 
Bible soared upward, and led the world onward still, as the 
soul rises to broader and higher life when the burden of a nar- 
row and mortal body falls away. 

" From the Bible Dr. Crosby passes to the great weapon of 
the temperance movement — the pledge. This he calls ' un- 
manly,' ' a strait-jacket ;' says it kills self-respect and under- 
mines all character. 

*' Hannah More said : ' We cannot expect perfection in any 
one ; but we may demand consistency of every one.' 

'* It does not tend to show the sincerity of these critics of our 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 459 

cause when we find them objecting in us to what they themselves 
uniformly practice on all other occasions. If we continue to 
believe in their sincerity, it can only be at the expense of their 
intelligence. Dr. Crosby is, undoubtedly, a member of a church. 
Does he mean to say that, when his church demanded his sig- 
nature to its creed and his pledge to obey its discipline, it asked 
what it was ' unmanly ' in him to grant and what destroys an 
individual's character — that his submission to this is ' foregoing 
his reasoning,' 'sinking back to his nonage,' etc. ? Of course 
he assents to none of these things. He only objects to a temper- 
ance pledge, not to a church one. 

"The husband pledges himself to his wife, and she to him, 
for life. Is the marriage ceremony, then, a curse, a hindrance 
to virtue and progress ? 

*' Society rests in all its transactions on the idea that a solemn 
promise, pledge, assertion strengthens and assures the act. The 
witness on the stand gives solemn promise to tell the truth ; the 
officer about to assume place for one year or ten, or for life, 
pledges his word and oath ; the grantor in a deed binds himself 
for all time by record ; churches, societies, universities accept 
funds on pledge to appropriate them to certain purposes and to 
no other — these and a score more of instances can be cited. In 
any final analysis all these rest on the same principle as the 
temperance pledge. No man ever denounced them as unmanly. 
I sent this month a legacy to a literary institution, on certain 
conditions, and received in return its pledge that the money 
should ever be sacredly used as directed. The doctor's prin- 
ciple would unsettle society ; and, if one proposed to apply it to 
any cause but temperance, practical men would quietly put him 
aside as out of his head. These cobweb theories, born of 
isolated cloister-life, do not bear exposure to the mid-day sun. 
or the rude winds of practical life. This is not a matter of 
theory. Thousands and tens of thousands attest the value ot 
the pledge. It never degraded, it only lifted them to a higher 
life. We who never lost our clear eyesight or level balance 
over books, but who stand mixed up and jostled in daily life, 
hardly deem any man's sentimental and fastidious criticism of 
the pledge worth answering. Every active worker in the tem- 
perance cause can recall hundreds of instances where it has 
been a man's salvation. 



460 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

" But our agitation of the drink question is ' bulldozing * and 
* intimidation.' This is only an unmanly whine. 

" What is the pulpit ? Does it not take admitted truths and 
press them home on conscience ? Or does it not seek to prove 
principles the listener does not admit, and then urge him to 
their practice ? Does it not criticise, and affirm, and denounce, 
seeking to waken the indifferent, convince the doubting, and 
claim consistent action of all ? Does it wait until the sinner 
acknowledges its principles before it denounces his action as a 
sin > By no means. Is church discipline visited only on those 
who see and confess their sins ? Is it not used to rouse them to 
a sense of the principle they will not acknowledge, and hold 
them up to the rebuke and take from them the respect of their 
fellows ? If our temperance agitation is * intimidation,' then 
nine tenths of the land's pulpits are bulldozers and the other 
tenth is useless. What does the Bible say of those who prophesy 
smooth things, and whose order was Nathan obeying when he 
said, ' Thou art the man ? * 

" Dr. Crosby says it is false, our constant assertion that mod- 
erate drinking makes drunkards. Will he please tell us where, 
then, the drunkards come from ? Certainly teetotalers do not 
recruit these swelling ranks. Will he please account for the 
million-times repeated story of the broken-hearted and despair- 
ing sot, or the reformed man, that * moderate drinking lulled 
them to a false security until the chain was too strong for them 
to break ? ' Will he please explain that confession forced from 
old Sam Johnson, and repeated hundreds of times since by men 
of seemingly strong resolve, * I can abstain : I can't be moder- 
ate ? * Do not the Bible, the writers of fiction, the master 
dramatists of ancient and modern times, the philosopher, the 
moralist, the man of affairs, —do not all these bear witness how 
insidiously the habits of sensual indulgence creep on their vic- 
tim until he wakes to find himself in chains of iron, his very will 
destroyed ? 

" But our movement is the delight of rum-sellers and the 
great manufacturer of drunkards. How is it, then, that anxious 
and terror-stricken rum-sellers assemble in conventions to de- 
nounce us and plan methods of resisting us ? No such conven- 
tions were ever heard of or needed until the last twenty years. 
How is it that they mob our lecturers and break up our meet- 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 461 

ings ? Was Dr. Crosby or any of his class ever mobbed by 
rum-sellers ? How is it that, the moment we get one of the 
prohibitory laws, ' which delight rum-sellers,' passed, these de- 
lighted men form parties to defeat every man who voted for it, 
crowd the lobbies to repeal it, and never rest until, by threat or 
bribes, they have repealed it ? If rum-sellers long and pray for 
the coming of the millennium of prohibition, why don't they all 
move down to Maine, and get as near to the desired heaven as 
they can ? If rum-sellers delight in our total-abstinence labors, 
how ungrateful in them to allow their organs all over the world 
to misrepresent and deny what little success even Dr. Crosby 
allows we have had in Maine I They ought to chuckle over it 
and scatter the news far and wide. When Dr. Crosby has an- 
swered half these questions, we have some more difficulties to 
propound which trouble us, about the unaccountable freaks of 
these delighted rum-sellers, who, delighted as they are with our 
work, yet never can bear or praise the very men who. Dr. Crosby 
says, are constantly employed spending time and money in 
' delighting ' these unreasonable fellows. 

" Dr. Crosby says that we are the cause of all the drunken- 
ness, that the temperance movement is a failure, must be, and 
ought to be. 

'* I will prove that Christianity is a failure in the same way. 
The famous unbelievers, down from Voltaire, through Mill, to 
the last infidel critic, prove Christianity, by the same sort of 
argument, to be a failure and the cause of most of the evils that 
burden us. Exaggerate all the evil that exists, especially those 
vices that will never wholly die while human nature remains 
what it is ; belittle and cast into shade all the progress that has 
been made ; dwell with zest on the new forms of sin that each 
age contributes to the infamy of the race ; keep your eyes firmly 
in the back of your head, and insist that there's nothing equal 
to what we had in old times — not even the snow-storms or the 
St. Michael pears — and the thing is done. 

Before our movement began three-quarters of the farms of 
Massachusetts were sold under the hammer for rum-debts. You 
could not enter a public house in country or city, of the first- 
class or the smaller ones, except through a grog-shop. Their 
guests felt mean if they did not at dinner order some kind of 
wine, and often ordered it when they did not wish it. Now the 



462 WENDELL rillLLII'S. 

grog-room is hidden from sight ; men slink into it ; and not 
more than one man in ten at the most fashionable hotels, and 
not one in fifty in common inns, orders wine at dinner. Then 
the sideboard of every well-to-do house was covered with 
liquors, and every guest was urged to drink ; the omission to 
do which would have been held a gross neglect, if not an insult. 
No man was buried without a lavish use of liquor ; no stage 
stopped without the traveller being thought mean if he did not 
help the house by taking a drink. Now one may travel hun- 
dreds of miles on rails which allow no liquor in their stations. 
Every farmer furnished drink to his men ; famous doctors went 
drunk to their patients ; the first lawyer in the Middle States 
was not singular when he held on by the rail in order to stand 
and argue, half-drunk, to the Supreme Court of the United 
States ; rich men saw to it that every clergyman who attended 
a convention was plied with wine ; and the preacher of the 
concio ad clerum was fed on brandy punch to place him on a 
more exhilarated level than his hearers. If a man caught sight 
of a grog-shop, he was as sure he had arrived in a Christian 
land as the shipwrecked sailor was when he caught sight of a 
gibbet. Dr. Crosby then had everybody, lay and clerical, on his 
side in construing the Bible ; whereas now we are in a healthy 
majority. 

" Even if the statistics showed that the amount of liquor con- 
sumed increased as fast as our population and wealth do — which 
they do not show, but just the contrary — that would not be suffi- 
cient evidence to prove that our movement has failed. The 
proper comparison is between what we were in 1820 and what 
we should have been now had not some beneficent agency 
arrested our downward progress. These evils, left to themselves, 
increase by no simple addition, but in cubic ratio, 

" Does Dr. Crosby fancy this active movement and vast mass 
of fact, opinion, and testimony can exist without beneficial in- 
fluence in an age ruled by brains ? He does not, then, under- 
stand moral forces or his own times. When, twenty-five years 
ago, Frederick Douglass was painting the Anti-Slavery movement 
as a failure unless we would load our guns, Sojourner Truth 
asked : ' Frederick, is God dead ? ' When I see the doctor's un- 
belief in the efficacy of the moral power and the weight of this mass 
pf conviction, I am tempted to ask him : ' Is your God dead ? * 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 463 

" Dr. Crosby closes by stating his plan and panacea. It is a 
regulated license. I will not delay you by criticising his or any 
other license plan. The statute books in forty States are filled 
with the abortions of thousands of license laws that were never 
executed, and most of them were never intended to be. We 
have as good a license-law in this State as was ever devised ; 
and yet it leaves such an amount of defiant, unblushing grog- 
selling as discourages Dr. Crosby, and leads him to think noth- 
ing has been done at all. His own city, with license laws, is 
yet so ruled and plundered by rum, that timid statesmen advise 
giving up republicanism, and borrowing a leaf from Bismarck 
to help us. License has been tried under the most favorable 
circumstances, and with the best backing for centuries, — ten or 
twelve, at least. Yet Dr. Crosby stands confounded before the 
result. We have never been allowed to try prohibition except in 
one State, and in some small circuits. Wherever it has been 
tried, it has succeeded. Friends who know, claim this : enemies 
who have been for a dozen years ruining teeth by biting files, 
confess it by their lack of argument, and lack of facts except 
when they invent them." ^ 

The second tremendous blow of our athlete of re- 
form was dealt at Harvard College, — a blow between 
the eyes. He received an invitation to deliver the 
centennial Phi Beta Kappa oration in the summer of 
1 88 1. He accepted, and on June 30th spoke on 
" The Scholar in a Republic," with the official, pro- 
fessional, and mercantile culture of thirty States for 
an audience. " It was," remarks Mr. Higginson, 
who was present, " the tardy recognition of him by 
his own college and his own literary society, and 
proved to be, in some respects, the most remarkable 
effort of his life. He never seemed more at his ease, 
more colloquial, and more extemporaneous ; and he 



' Vide Phillips's " Review of Dr. Crosby's ' Calm View of Temper- 
ance.' " Published by National Temperance Society. New York, 
1%%1, passim. 



464 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

held an unwilling audience spellbound, while bating 
absolutely nothing of his radicalism. Many a re- 
spectable lawyer and divine felt his blood run cold, 
the next day, when he found that the fascinating 
orator whom he had applauded to the echo had 
really made the assassination of an emperor seem as 
trivial as the doom of a mosquito." * 

The Rev. James Freeman Clarke, an alumnus of 
Harvard, and an auditor, has also left an account of 
the event, which we transcribe : 

*• When I knew that Wendell Phillips was to give the Phi Beta 
Kappa oration at Cambridge, I was very curious to know what 
course he would take. I said, ' He has two opportunities, 
neither of which he has ever had before. He has always spoken 
to the people. Now he is invited to address scholars. He has 
an opportunity to deliver a grand academic discourse, and to 
show, that, when he chooses to do it, he can be the peer of 
Everett or Sumner on their own platform of high culture. He 
can leave behind personalities, forget for the hour his hatreds 
and enmities, and meet all his old opponents peacefully, in the 
still air of delightful studies. This is an opportunity he has 
never had before, and probably will never have again.' 

" ' But there is another and different opportunity now offered 
him. Now, for the first and only time, he will have face to face 
before him the representatives of that Cambridge culture which 
has had little sympathy with his past labors. He can tell them 
how backward they were in the old Anti-Slavery contest, and 
how reluctant to take part in any later reforms. If he has been 
bitter before, he can be ten times as bitter now. He can make 
this the day of judgment for the sins of half a century. This 
opportunity, also, is unique. It will never come again. Can he 
resist this temptation, or not ? * 

" It never occurred to me that he would accept and use both 
opportunities, but he did so. He gave an oration of great power 
and beauty, full of strong thoughts and happy illustrations, not 



' Higginson's obituary notice, pp. 14, i§, 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 465 

unworthy of any university platform or academic scholar. It 
was nearly, though not wholly, free from personalities ; but it 
was also one long rebuke for the recreant scholarship of Cam- 
bridge. It arraigned and condemned all scholarship as essen- 
tially timid, selfish, and unheroic. It gave a list of the leading 
reforms of the last forty years, in none of which Cambridge 
scholarship had taken any share, — Anti-Slavery, Woman's 
Rights, the wrongs of Ireland, reform in criminal legislation, — 
and wound up the catalogue by denouncing as disgusting cant 
all condemnation of Russian Nihilism and its methods. He 
admitted, that, in a land where speech and the press are free, 
recourse to assassination is criminal, but defended ' dynamite 
and the dagger * as the only methods of reform open in 
Russia." ' 

There had been two previous Phi Beta Kappa 
orations at Cambridge which were epoch-making — 
Everett's, in 1824, when he apostrophized Lafayette, 
who was on the platform ; and Emerson's, in 1837, 
which turned out to be an unlooked-for excursion 
into untrodden domains of thought. Phillips's was 
the highest water-mark in style and expression — 
" the ocean- wave kissing the Alps." ^ 

" Well," was his comment, " I suppose they 
wanted me to bring myself,'' 

In the course of his Phi Beta Kappa address, Mr. 
PhiUips made a reference to Civil Service Reform 
which called forth criticism, and which impelled him 
to a further statement of his views. Said he : 

" For George William Curtis, the leader of the Civil Service 
Reform, I have the most sincere respect. His place as stales- 
man, scholar, and reformer is such, and so universally recog- 



' Quoted in Austin's " Life," pp. 342, 343- 

' Vide the full text of the address in the Appendix. 



466 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

nized, that praise from me would be almost impertinence. But 
a.iarge proportion of the party in New York, and a still larger 
proportion of its adherents in Massachusetts, justify all I have 
said of it and them. 

" My plan of Civil Service Reform would be the opposite of 
what they propose. I should seek a remedy for the evils they 
describe in a wholly different direction from theirs, — in fearless 
recourse to a further extension of the democratic principles of 
our institutions. 

" Let each district choose its own postmaster and Custom- 
House officials. This course would appeal to the best sense and 
sober second thought of each district. Responsibility would 
purify and elevate the masses, while Government would be 
relieved from that mass of patronage which debauches it. 

" Their plan is impracticable, and ought to be ; for it con- 
travenes the fundamental idea of our institutions, and contem- 
plates a coterie of men kept long in office, — largely independent 
of the people, — a miniature aristocracy, filled with a dangerous 
esprit de corps. The Liberal party in England has long felt 
the dead-weight and obstructive influence of such a class. The 
worst element at Washington in 1861, the one that hated Lincoln 
most bitterly, and gave him the most trouble, — the one that re- 
sisted the new order of things most angrily and obstinately, and 
put the safety of the city into most serious peril, — v/as the body 
of old office-holders, poisoned with length of official life, scoffing 
at the people as intrusive intermeddlers ; men in whom some- 
thing like a fixed tenure of office had killed all sympathy with 
the democratic tendency of our system. 

" Some might fear that our Government could not be carried 
on without this patronage. 

" Hamilton is quoted as saying, ' Purge the British Govern- 
ment of its corruption, and give to its popular branch equality 
of representation, and it would become an impracticable gov^rn- 
ment.' 

" The British Government has been pretty well purged, and 
its popular branch comes now very near to equality of repre- 
sentation. Yet, spite of Hamilton's prophecy, the machine still 
works, and works better and better for every successive measure 
of such purification and reform. 

" So our Government, relieved of the weight of this debasing 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 467 

patronage, would disappoint the sullen forebodings of Tory 
misgiving, and rise to nobler action." * 

There was another part of the world, tumultuous 
as America had been in the xA-nti-Slavery days, 
where the orator was desired to "bring- himself." 
In grateful recognition of his services to Ireland, 
which were marked through the Land League cam- 
paign, when he took the stump and uttered words 
that echoed across the ocean and inspired Erin, — 
Mr. Phillips, a few months after the Cambridge 
triumph, received the following call : 

Office of the " Irish World," 

New York, Oct. 31, 1881. 
*' Wendell Phillips, Boston. 

** I have just received the following cable from Mr. Egan, 
Land League Treasurer, Paris : 

** * Will Wendell Phillips come to Ireland, to advocate No 
Rent during the suspension of Constitutional liberties ? The 
League will pay all expenses. Reply. 

* Patrick Egan.' 

" I beg you, Mr. Phillips, to hearken to this as an inspiration 
and a call from God Himself. You are the one man in America 
fitted for the glorious mission. All Ireland will rise to its feet 
to bless and cheer you. Never did Caesar receive such an ova- 
tion. Civilization will look on in admiring wonder. The good 
which your heroic act will effect is incalculable ; and your 
name, consecrated in the memory of a grateful people, will live 

while time endures. 

" Patrick Ford." "^ 

Appreciating the compliment, but unable to go, 
he penned a declination : 



* " Scholar in a Republic." Notes : Note 2. 
' Vide the Irish World, November, i88i. 



468 WENDELL PHILLIPSo 

" Boston, Nov. 2, 1881. 
Mr. Patrick Ford : 

" Sir : I receive with humility the summons you send me, 
well knowing, that, in any circumstances, I could not do a tenth 
part of what your partiality makes you think I could. 

" But, in this case, humanity, constitutional government, and 
civilization itself claim his best service of every man. 

" Ireland to-day leads the van in the struggle for right, jus- 
tice, and freedom. 

" England has forfeited her right to rule, if she ever had any, 
by a three hundred years' exhibition of her unfitness and in- 
ability to do so. The failure is confessed by all her statesmen 
of both parties for the last hundred years. 

" Discontent, poverty, famine, and death are her accusers. 

" Her rulers cannot plead ignorance. Their own shameless 
confessions, repeated over and over again, admit that England's 
rule has been unjust, selfish, and cruel. She has planned that 
Ireland should starve, hoping she would then be too weak to 
resist. 

*' To-day, while her Government tramples under foot every 
principle in English history that makes men honor it, the world 
waits in sure and glad expectation of her defeat, confident that 
her overthrow will be the triumph of right, justice, and civiliza- 
tion. 

" The three thousand miles of ocean that separate us from 
her shores, enable us to judge her course as dispassionately as 
posterity will judge it a hundred years hence ; and we see the 
mad blunders of her Government as posterity will see them. 

" Let Ireland only persevere, and her victory is certain. 

" With unbroken front, let her assault despotism in its central 
point, Rent. Ireland owes none to-day, — certainly not to a 
class whose government is the prison and the bayonet. 

" How cheerfully would I do my part ! How gladly would I 

share in the honors of such a struggle ! But the state of my 

health obliges me to give up public speaking. I can only bid 

you God-speed, and pray for your speedy and complete success. 

** Yours very respectfully, 

" Wendell Phillips." 

The orator was the most modest of men. A 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 469 

** fuss" with himself in the middle of it he specially 
disliked. Learning that his admirers proposed to 
celebrate his approaching seventieth birthday, he 
hastened to nip the project in the bud. Writing on 
the day following the date of his letter to Mr. Ford, 
to one who was at the headquarters of the move- 
ment, he said : 

" Please understand that any such thing would be very dis- 
agreeable to me. I particularly request that you have no hand 
in it. And should you hear of any one intending such a notice 
of the day, please let him understand my wishes." * 

His feeling was evidently like that of Washington, 
when, as he stood before the surrendering army of 
Cornwallis, some of the Continental troops began to 
cheer as that officer came forward to yield his sword. 
The noble Virginian turned and said : " Let pos- 
terity cheer for us." '^ Posterity may be confidently 
relied upon to do it in both cases. 



» Letter to Mrs. E. F. C. (ms.). ^ Phillips's " Speeches," p. 68 s<^. 



11. 

LENGTHENING SHADOWS. 

The perennial popularity of Wendell Phillips and 
his surprising mental and physical strength in the 
evening of his life, may be measured by three tests : 
the continuous demand for his services ; the un- 
diminished size of his audiences ; and his activity. 
He neither looked nor acted like an old man. That 
he sometimes wearied of his peripatetic routine is 
true, as witness these hues written from Albany, 
N. Y., in December, 1881 : "I work hard, and battle 
with snow-storms and drifts as I used to do ten years 
ago, and hoped I shouldn't now. But must be what 
must." ^ 

When the spring of 1882 opened, he found himself, 
to his unutterable grief, forced to leave the house in 
which he had resided since 1841 — the only home he 
had known since he left his mother's roof, the scene 
of his whole married life, a spot steeped in the mem- 
ories and associations of more than forty years. The 
city had long projected the widening of the adjacent 
Harrison Avenue, an improvement which would 
necessitate the demolition of No. 26 Essex Street. 
He and his wife (for Mrs. Phillips was as reluctant 
to move as her husband) had postponed the evil day 
by influence with the authorities. Both desired to 
die where they had lived. He predicted his own 



Ler.ter to Mrs. E. F. C. (ms.). 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 47 1 

demise in the near future, and announced that he 
would not reach the age of seventy-four.' Never- 
theless, in 1882 the city decided that the contem- 
plated change could no longer wait. 

With a heavy heart, the apostle of progress, now 
made, by the irony of fate, himself a victim of im- 
provement, set out to find a new house. In the 
neighborhood he discovered a house much like the 
old one. It was in Common Street, — No. 37. 
Hither he moved. No easy task. For there in 
Essex Street was the accumulation of a lifetime. 
With many a sigh, the exiled couple collected, as- 
sorted, and carted away their lares et pejiates. Their 
effort was to reproduce the Essex Street interior 
here in Common Street. The wife's apartment bore 
a singularly close resemblance to the former cham- 
ber. To make it more homelike, the thoughtful 
husband transferred thither the old mantel and open 
grate, and the furniture was similarly arranged. 
But they never felt quite at home again. Their 
friends noted their homesickness with sorrow. It 
was widely thought that Boston might have let one 
more of her streets stay crooked and narrow a little 
longer as a graceful compliment to her most illus- 
trious son. But the Puritan capital did not awake 
until after he was gone to recognize the value of the 
Puritan orator. 

Mr. Phillips walked one day with a friend to the 
familiar corner and stood looking at the spot — the 
old house gone. " It was hard," said he, " that the 
city would not let me stay till the end in my home 
for forty years !" Then, after a pause, he turned 



^ So he told ex-Mayor Samuel A. Green and others. 



472 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

with the remark :" It is no matter. I am almost 
through with it all." ' 

In a letter addressed to his friend Aaron M. Pow- 
ell, of New York City, and dated August i6th, 1882, 
he writes : 

'* You ought to know what I did with my Anti-Slavery library. 
Did I tell you .'' I sent a complete tile of the Statidard, from 
1840 to 1872, to Mr. Spofford, for the Congressional Library ; 
also three volumes of the Liberator to fill up his gaps, which 
are now not many. I sent the Astor Library a complete file of 
the Liberator. It had all the Standards. I gave the Boston 
Public Library a complete file of the Standard (it had almost 
perfect Liberator^ ; and all my reports, pamphlets, and surplus 
numbers of newspapers, bound and unbound, Emattcipators 
and Heralds of Freedom, they agreeing to distribute. So you 
see I have acted as my own executor, to get rid of twenty-five 
hundred volumes." 

The fall and winter of 1882-83 were devoted by 
Mr. Phillips to lecturing, as usual — his last Lyceum 
round. He prepared and delivered in Boston, New 
York, Philadelphia, and elsewhere, a new lecture, 
" The Yardstick," in which he argued the question 
of Capital and Labor, arraigned the existing parties 
as representing dead issues, and called Christians 
and patriots to organize on a platform of to-day. 

At the end of the season he went with Mrs. Phil- 
lips to Belmont, near by, for the summer. From 
this village he wrote, on August 17th, 1883, a de- 
scription of his environment : 

" Nothing is changed here. We plod on as usual. ... I go 
in town twice a week and sometimes thrice ; reading and dozing 
the other days. Boston is crowded notwithstanding our ab- 



' Recollections of Mrs. E. F. C. (ms.). 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 473 

sence ! I don't think I could live all the time in the country. 
It would make me a Rip Van Winkle in ten months." 

On the last day of August he informs the same 
friend of his sudden return to town : 

" We are at zi Common Street. Ann was so uncomfortable 
that we were obliged to run in ; and here we are— dust, noise, 
heat ! 

" Ann says, and I repeat with emphasis, don't bring back an 
owl. Cruel, as he must be caged, and for an Abolitionist it is a 
gross violation of principle. 

" Then, only silly women, with no brains, have animal pets 
like that. There's enough to do and care for in this world with- 
out saddling ourselves with such fooleries. Forgive plain 
speech. I only care for you, and am 

"Affectionately, 

*' Wendell Phillips." ^ 

Toward the end of 1883, the surviving founders 
of the American Anti-Slavery Society, together with 
later members, arranged to hold a meeting in Phila- 
delphia to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of 
its organization. The Agitator was urgently in- 
vited. Circumstances were such that he could not 
leave home, and he sent a letter to Mr. Robert Pur- 
vis, Chairman of the Committee of Arrangements. 
It is important as outlining his position in these late 
moments of his life, and containing his advice (final, 
as it proved) to his ancient co-workers : 

" Boston, December 3, 1883. 

*' My dear Purvis : I am very sorry that I cannot be with 
you to-morrow. 

" You know I was not one of the founders of the American 
Anti-Slavery Society. But I should be glad to meet the few who 
survive of that devoted band, congratulate them on the marvel- 



» Written to Mrs. E. F. C. (ms.). « Jb, 



474 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

ious work they began, and join them in rejoicing that so many 
of their comrades lived to see the completion and triumph of 
their movement, I think that agitation did more to reveal the 
workings of republican institutions, and awaken men to their 
dangers and duties as citizens, than any previous event in our 
history. 

" As the Latin proverb says in Carlyle's translation, 'Every 
road leads to the end of the world,' so this movement touched 
in its progress all the great questions of the age, — right of private 
judgment, place of the Bible, questions of race and sex, the 
tenure of property, the relations of citizens and law, and of 
capitalist to labor, with many others. With all these we were 
brought face to face, and many of them we were forced to dis- 
cuss at full length. Now that the first great purpose of the 
movement is accomplished, it seems wasteful that the skill and 
experience got from thirty years of such labor and agitation 
should be lost. 

" The freedmen still need the protection of a vigilant public 
opinion, and will need it for the rest of this generation. Labor 
and its kindred question. Finance, claim our aid in the name of 
that same humanity and justice which originally stirred us. We 
always proclaimed that it was not only the protection of the 
negro we aimed at, but that we sought to establish a principle, 
the rights of human nature. 

" In that view it seems to me we are narrow and wanting if 
wc do not contribute the energy and skill which so many years 
have aroused and created, to those questions which flow so 
naturally out of ours and belong to the same great brotherhood. 
Let it not be said that the old Abolitionist stopped with the 
negro, and was never able to see that the same principles he had 
advocated at such cost claimed his utmost effort to protect all 
labor, white and black, and to further the discussion of every 
claim of down-trodden humanity. Let it be seen that our ex- 
perience made us not merely Abolitionists, but philanthropists. 

'* Yours faithfully, 

"Wendell Phillips." ^ 
Mr. R. Purvis. 



' Vide Commemorative Pamphlet of the Proceedings. Philadelphia, 

1884. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 475 

It will be observed that the letter to Philadelphia 
bears the date of December 3d. On the 26th of the 
month, the orator went to the '' Old South" Church, 
in Boston, to take part in the exercises at the unveil- 
ing' of Anne Whitney's statue of Harriet Martineau — 
his personal friend. Mrs. Mary A. Livermore pre- 
sided. William Lloyd Garrison, Jr., spoke, and 
was followed by Mr. Phillips. As the well-known 
and honored face and form appeared, the assembly, 
largely composed of ladies, broke into hearty ap- 
plause : 

" Webster once said, that ' In war there are no Sundays.* So 
in moral questions there are no nations. Intellect and morals 
transcend all limits. When a moral issue is stirred, then there 
is no American, no German. We are all men and women. 
And that is the reason why I think we should indorse this 
memorial of the city to Harriet Martineau, because her service 
transcends nationality. There would be nothing inappropriate 
if we raised a memorial to Wickliffe, or if the common-school 
system of New England raised a memorial to Calvin ; for they 
rendered the greatest of services. So with Harriet Martineau, 
we might fairly render a monument to the grandest woman of 
her day, we, the heirs of the same language, and one in the 
same civilization ; for steam and the telegraph have made, not 
many nations, but one, in perfect unity in the world of thought, 
purpose, and intellect. And there could be no fault found with 
thus recognizing this counsellor of princes, and adviser of min- 
isters, this woman who has done more for beneficial changes in 
the English world than any ten men in Great Britain. In an 
epoch fertile of great genius among women, it may be said of 
Miss Martineau, that she was the peer of the noblest, and that 
her influence on the progress of the age was more than equal to 
that of all the others combined. She has the great honor of 
having always seen the truth one generation ahead ; and so con- 
sistent was she, so keen of insight, that there is no need of going 
back to explain by circumstances in order to justify the actions 
of her life. This can hardly be said of any great Englishman, 



476 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

even by his admirers. We place the statue here in Boston 
because she has made herself an American. She passed through 
this city on the very day when Mr. Garrison was mobbed on 
State Street. Her friends feared lo ^ell her the truth when she 
asked what the immense crowd were doing, and dissimulated 
by saying it was post-time, and the throng were hurrying to the 
office for mail. Afterward, when she heard of the mob and its 
action, horror-struck, she turned to her host, the honored presi- 
dent of a neighboring university ; and even he was American 
enough to assure her that no harm could come from such a 
scene ; said it was not a mob, it was a collection or gathering. 
Harriet Martineau had been welcomed all over America. She 
had been received by Calhoun in South Carolina, the Chief Jus- 
tice of Virginia had welcomed her at his mansion. But she went 
through the South concealing no repugnance, making her obei- 
sance to no idol. She never bowed anywhere to the aristocracy 
of accident. This brave head and heart held its own through- 
out that journey. She came here to gain a personal knowledge 
of the Abolitionists, and her first experience was with the mob 
on State Street. Of course she expressed all the horror which a 
gallant soul would feel. You may speak of the magnanimity 
and courage of Harriet Martineau ; but the first element is her 
rectitude of purpose, by which was born that true instinct which 
saw through all things. We have had Englishmen come here, 
who were clear-sighted enough to say true words after they re- 
turned home ; but this was a woman who was welcomed by 
crowds in the South, and about whom a glamor was thrown to 
prevent her from seeing the truth. It is easy to be independent 
when all behind you agree with you, but the difficulty comes 
when nine hundred and ninety-nine of your friends think you 
wrong. Then it is the brave soul who stands up, one among a 
thousand, but remembering that one with God makes a majority. 
This was Harriet Martineau. She was surrounded by doctors 
of divinity, who were hedging her about with their theories and 
beliefs. What do some of these later travellers who have been 
here know of the real New England, when they have been seated 
in sealed houses, and gorged with the glittering banquets of 
social societies ? Harriet Martineau, instead of lingering in the 
camps of the Philistines, could, with courage, declare, * I'll go 
among the Abolitionists, and see for myself.' Shortly after the 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 4/7 

time of the State Street mob, she came to Cambridge ; and her 
hosts there begged her not to put her hand into their quarrels. 
The Abolitionists held a meeting there. The only hall of that 
day open to them was owned by infidels. Think of that, ye 
friends of Christianity. And yet the infidelity of that day is the 
Christianity of to-day. To this meeting in this hall Miss Mar- 
tineau went to express her entire sympathy with the occasion. 
As a result of her words and deeds, such was the lawlessness 
of that time, she had to turn back from her intended journey to 
the West, and was assured that she would be lynched if she 
dared set foot in Ohio. She gave up her journey, but not her 
principles. 

** Harriet Martineau saw, not merely the question of free 
speech, but the grandeur of the great movement just then 
opened. This great movement is second only to the Reforma- 
tion in the history of the English and the German race. In time 
to come, when the grandeur of this movement is set forth in 
history, you will see its proportions and beneficial results. Har- 
riet Martineau saw it fifty years ago, and after that she was one 
of us. She was always the friend of the poor. Prisoner, slave, 
wage-serf, worn-out by toil in the mill, no matter who the suf- 
ferer, there was always one person who could influence Tory 
and Liberal to listen. Americans, I ask you to welcome to 
Boston this statue of Harriet Martineau, because she was the 
greatest American Abolitionist. We want our children to see 
the woman who came to observe, and remained to work, and, 
having once put her hand to the plough, persevered until she 
was allowed to live where the paean of the emancipated four 
millions went up to heaven, showing the attainment of her great 
desire." * 

On this occasion it was universally remarked that 
Mr. Phillips seemed well and strong. The graceful 
dignity of posture, the finished elocution, the silvery 
music of the voice, the sparing yet significant ges- 
ture, the keen eye, the noble expression of counte- 
nance—not one of the familiar features of his oratory 



* Boston Daify Advertiser, December 4th, i88$» 



478 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

was missed. And the audience retired in the hope 
and with the expectation of hearing him for years 
to come. No one imagined it to be the last public 
appearance of Wendell Phillips. 
It was. 



ill. 

SUNDOWN. 

On New Year's morning of 1884, the Rev. Dr. 
Sheldon Jackson, who was interested in the estab- 
lishment of education in Alaska, called at the house 
in Common Street to solicit the aid of the people's 
Tribune in bringing his project to the attention of 
Congress. Mr. Phillips expressed his sympath}^ 
and at once sat down and wrote as follows to the 
Hon. Patrick Collins, a representative from Massa- 
chusetts at Washington — the last words of public 
concern traced by his pen : 

" My dear Sir : Is it wholly in order to write a Congress- 
man a Happy New Year ? 

*' Well, if it is not, excuse my ignorance of parliamentary 
customs. 

'* I want to ask a favor. There will come before Congress 
some measure toward the creation of a territorial government in 
Alaska, which, you will hardly believe, is without government, 
court, or schools, though we have possessed it since 1867, and 
we found all those there when Russia surrendered it to us ; and 
though Alaska yields some three hundred thousand dollars 
annually — a fifth part of which sum would pay all the cost of 
schools, court, governor, etc. 

" The Rev. Dr. Sheldon Jackson, who is a missionary there, 
will introduce himself to you ; and I ask for him and his cause 
your favorable consideration. 

" Yours cordially, 

*• Wendell Phillips." ' 

' Vide Boston Herald, Phillips memorial edition, February 4th, 
1884. 



480 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

The serious illness of Mrs. Phillips imprisoned her 
husband through January. He hardly left her room. 
On the 26th inst. Mr. Phillips was suddenly seized 
with agony of the chest. Ominous symptom ! His 
father and three of his brothers had died after similar 
warning. The family physician, Dr. David Thayer, 
was instantly summoned. He made a thorough ex- 
amination and confirmed the worst fears of the house- 
hold. It was a case of angina pectoris. The rem- 
edies administered brought temporar}^ relief. Mr. 
Phillips lay on a lounge, self-possessed and smiling. 
This occurred in the forenoon. 

In the afternoon an intimate friend called and con- 
versed with him at length. " I found him," she 
says, ' * as serene as ever he was, although Dr. 
Thayer had just informed him that the morning's 
pain was a death-warrant. I asked him about his 
faith. He said it was absolute. We then spoke of 
Christ, in whom he believed as divine. Quoting the 
words which Riehm, in his biography of Hupfeld, 
puts into the mouth of that eminent Semitic scholar 
and critic, he said : * I find the whole history of hu- 
manity before Him and after Him points to Him, and 
finds in Him its centre and its solution. His whole 
conduct, His deeds, His words have a supernatural 
character, being altogether inexplicable from human 
relations and human means. I feel that here there is 
something more than man. ' When I raised objections, 
he told me, in substance, that nothing but the Spirit of 
Christ had enabled him to suffer and endure what he 
had. * Then you have no doubt about a future life ? ' 
I asked. His answer was in these words : * I am as 
sure of it as I am that there will be a to-morrow.* '* * 



Recollections of Mrs. E. F. Crosby (MS.). 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 48 1 

On Sunday the pain returned. He suffered ter- 
ribly. The physician reappeared, and the ailment 
seemed to yield to his treatment. The patient 
brightened on Monday. On Tuesday he was quite 
himself. All felt hopeful. When Wednesday 
dawned there was a relapse. Through that day and 
the next he lay in agony. The doctor, surrounded 
by medical assistants, remained in constant attend- 
ance. On Friday relief came, but only for a space. 
The paroxysms returned with redoubled terror. 
Mr. Phillips fainted, and was revived with difficulty. 
As the pain continued anaesthetics were adminis- 
tered. On Saturday he was again relieved. When 
Dr. Thayer, at his request, told him the probable 
result, he smiled and said : 

" I have no fear of death. I have long foreseen it. 
My only regret is for poor Ann. I had hoped to 
close her eyes before mine were shut." 

He lay quietly through the day in the full posses- 
sion of his faculties. His chief anxiety was for 
*' Ann" — his care for half a century ; for her, and 
lest he should give unnecessary trouble to the will- 
ing watchers at the bedside. At fifteen minutes past 
six o'clock on Saturday evening, February 2d, he 
sighed gently, closed his eyes, and ** passed away 
as calmly as though going to sleep." ^ 

Serene, self-forgetful, thoughtful of others, and 
most of all with her in his mind and heart, he 
died as he had lived— Wendell Phillips to the 
end.' 



* The author had these particulars from the lips of Dr. Thayer. 
2 Mrs. Phillips survived her husband a little more than a year. 
She was tenderly cared for by relatives and friends, and died, April 



482 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

23d, 1885, in the Common Street home. ** The few lifelong friends 
who were privileged to look upon her face the following Easter morn- 
ing, were startled by its expression. She lay as if asleep, with all the 
purity and guilelessness of her youthful face ripened into maturity. 
It seemed transfiguration." ** Memorial of Ann Phillips," by Mrs. 
Anna G. Alford, p. ao. 



IV. 

'* AT EVENTIME IT SHALL BE LIGHT." 

The announcement of Mr. Phillips's death wa^ 
followed by a wonderful outburst of feeling, in which 
surprise, grief, admiration, love, were strongly 
mingled. Nor was there heard in the chorus of re- 
mark one discordant note. As the death-tidings 
sped from ocean to ocean, cities, towns, hamlets 
uprose and uncovered ; while, with choked utter- 
ance, negroes with whom he had been bound, women 
whom he loved with the purity of an anchorite, 
Irishmen whose aspirations for the green flag over 
Castle Green he shared and uttered, Labor Reformers 
whose fellow he had made himself, the poor and 
miserable now doubly impoverished and unhapp}^, 
— whispered brokenly the name they loved. 

As the Amphion-lips were hushed yonder in the 
plain house on Common Street, the music of his life 
was repeated by the pulpit, platform, and press,- — 
music, solemn as a psalm, inspiring as a battle hymn. 
The South joined the North, saw the real friend in 
the seeming foe ; and in New Orleans, Charleston, 
and Richmond tender words were spoken as the 
bulletins announced, " Wendell Phillips is dead." 

The shock in Boston, and the sorrow, were pecul- 
iarly marked. On Sunday, February 3d, the be- 
reavement was the topic of subdued conversation in 
every home, and the text in all the churches. On 



4-84 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Monday, the Legislature, then in session, appointed 
a committee to formulate the feeling of the common- 
wealth ; and the Common Council held a special 
meeting to mature appropriate action on the part of 
Boston. At the same time the Labor Reformers 
were in session at the Tremont House, arranging 
for a public memorial meeting on Tuesday night in 
Faneuil Hall ; while opposite in Tremont Temple 
Joseph Cook in his Monday lecture was discoursing 
of the dead orator, and declaring that " fifty years 
hence it would not be asked, ' What did Boston 
think of Wendell Phillips ? ' but ' What did Wendell 
Phillips think of Boston ? ' " 

Meantime, telegrams, letters of condolence, per- 
sonal inquiries came pouring in from everywhither, 
giving evidence that this loss was not local but 
national ; and that, as some one said, the apostle of 
humanity deserved a monument in Dublin, in St. 
Petersburg, and in Charleston, as well as in Boston. 

The Legislature adopted a report which was at 
once discriminating and eulogistic, saying : 

" The Orator's fellow-citizens have always respected him for 
every domestic virtue and for a grandly stoical simplicity of life. 
Full of the generous spirit of self-sacrifice, seeking no public 
honor, devoting his life and great powers to the cause of the 
oppressed even to his own heavy loss, standing firm against any 
and every injustice like the hills of his native State, volcanic in 
his outbursts of wrath against oppression, Wendell Phillips 
stands as the strongest type of the fearless, uncompromising 
reformer." ' 

The City Council spoke in a similar strain, and 
provided for the delivery of a eulogy under the 



^ Vide Report of Committee of Massachusetts Legislature, accepted 
February 6th, 1884, 



WENDELT. PHILLIPS. 485 

auspices of Boston — which was pronounced a little 
later by the one man in America best fitted for the 
task by kindred culture, sympathetic feeling, and 
graceful eloquence, Mr. George William Curtis, 
who said : 

" As we recall the story of that life, the spectacle of to-day is 
one of the most significant in our history. This memorial rite 
is not a tribute to official service, to literary genius, to scientific 
distinction ; it is a homage to personal character. It is the sol- 
emn public declaration that a life of transcendent purity of pur- 
pose, blended with commanding powers, devoted with absolute 
unselfishness, and with amazing results, to the welfare of the 
country and of humanity, is, in the American Republic, an ex- 
ample so inspiring, a patriotism so lofty, and a public service so 
beneficent, that, in contemplating them, discordant opinions, 
differing judgments, and the sharp sting of controversial speech, 
vanish like frost in a flood of sunshine." * 

The gathering in Faneuil Hall on Tuesday even- 
ing was strikingly and suggestively comprehensive. 
Labor, Woman Suffrage, Irish Nationality, Tem- 
perance, Anti- Slavery,— all were represented by 
prominent exponents, and each in turn twined a 
wreath of laurel on the brow of him who had been 
the consummate embodiment of all. 

The next day, Wednesday, at eleven o'clock, the 
funeral took place. The dear dust was borne to the 
adjacent HoUis Street church," where, in the pres- 
ence of a vast and cosmopolitan congregation, ser- 
vices were held of touching simplicity, — a few verses 
of Scripture and a brief prayer by the Rev. Samuel 



' Curtis's ** Eulogy," pp. 4. 5. 

2 The pall-bearers were Judge S. E. Sewall, Dr. Oliver Wendell 
Holmes, Theodore D. Weld, John M. Forbes, Wendell Phillips Gar- 
rison, Lewis Hayden (colored), Charles K. Whipple, William I. 
Bowditch, Richard Hallowell, and Edward M. Davis. 



486 WENDELL PHILLtPS. 

Longfellow (the brother and biographer uf the poet), 
and a faltering word by the Rev. Samuel May,' both 
comrades of Mr. Phillips. 

From the church, in compliance with a request so 
general that it assumed the tone of a command, the 
body was borne by a guard of honor composed of 
two colored companies of the State Guard and pre- 
ceded by muffled drums through crowded streets, 
the windows filled, the sidewalks lined with sym- 
pathetic spectators, to Faneuil Hall, where he had 
made history, — a final, and on his part who lay there 
in the coffin an unresponsive visit. 

Here, from one o'clock until four, the body lay in 
state. Beautiful floral tributes abounded. But the 
hall was otherwise unadorned. The scene out on 
the streets and along the approaches to the entrance 
was unprecedented. Thousands and thousands of 
people struggled for a place in the line, eager for a 
last look at the noble countenance. These thousands 
were of both sexes, all colors, every race, and every 
social grade : here, an old colored woman, the tears 
streaming down her cheeks, and crying as she passed 
the casket, " He was de bes' fren' we ever had !" 
there, an Irishman, the brogue and the wit silenced 
now beside the still tongue which had pleaded so 
often for Erin ; here, a lad whom he had befriended 
and secured employment for ; there, a gray-haired 
merchant who " knew Wendell at school ;" here, a 
group of boys and girls who had a filial pride in this 
father of the commonwealth ; there, — yes, Frederick 
Douglass, who in passing exclaimed, " I loved him. 



' Mr. May conducted the services at the funeral of Mrs. Phillips, 
also, the next year. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 487 

tLtid 1 wanted to see this throng, to feel the grip he 
had on the community ; 'tis wonderful !" So it 
went on for hours, the crowd increasing instead of 
diminishing, becoming more instead of less diversi- 
fied ; all here to pay an honest tribute to him of 
whom, as of the Master, it might be said, " the com- 
mon people heard him gladly." 

At last twilight began to shake down her curtains. 
In the face of the struggling thousands the doors 
were clanged to ; the casket was removed ; the line 
of march was retaken through massive lines of un- 
covered lookers-on ; the Old Granery Burial 
Ground, on Boston Common, v/as reached ; here, 
beside his father and mother in the family vault, all 
that was mortal of Wendell Phillips was laid away ;' 
and the multitude dispersed. 

Such was Boston's homage to her uncrowned king 
of thought and speech. 

All this was thrown at the time by Nora Perry, 
who knew and loved Mr. Phillips, into thrilling 
verse : 

Along the streets one day with that swift tread 
He walked a living king — then " He is dead" 
The whisper flew from lip to lip, while still 
Sounding within our ears, the echoing thrill 
Of his magician's voice we seemed to hear 
In notes of melody ring near and clear. 



* As early as 1877 Mr. Phillips had planned to be buried in the 
beautiful suburb of Milion, where he and his wife often passed their 
summers. Here he had purchased a lot ; and hither on the deafh of 
Mrs. Phillips both were borne and finally interred. A plain slab now 
marks the spot, on which is chiselled, " Ann and Wendell Phillips." 
In referring to this, Theodore D. Weld said to the writer : " Wendell 
did not care to lie amid the beat of hurrying feet, but wished to be 
out where the birds sing and the flowers bloom." 



488 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

So near, so clear, men cried, " It cannot be I 

It was but yesterday he spoke to me ; 

But yesterday we saw him move along, 

His head above the crowd, swift-paced and strong, 

But yesterday his plan and purpose sped ; 

It cannot be to day that he is dead." 

A moment thus, half dazed, men met and spoke, 

When first the sudden news upon them broke ; 

A moment more, with sad acceptance turned 

To face the bitter truth that they had spurned. 

Friends said through tears, " How empty seems the town !" 

And warring critics laid their weapons down. 

How at the last this great heart conquered all 

We know who watched above his sacred pall — 

One day a living king he faced a crowd 

Of critic foes ; over the dead king bowed 

A throng of friends who yesterday were those 

Who thought themselves, and whom the world thought, foes. 



V. 

THE ORATOR, 

The great Agitator has now been long enough 
withdrawn from the arena which was the scene of 
his tumultuous career to make an estimate of his 
oratory both interesting and important. Interest- 
ing ; because his unique reputation provokes inquiry. 
Important ; because no fame, save that of 2i prima 
donna, is so intoxicating, while none, with the same 
exception, is so ephemeral as that of an orator. 
When the voice is hushed reputation becomes a 
memory. Like a bird on the wing, it must be 
bagged, if at all, as it flies and before it vanishes. 
The living presence embarrasses criticism ; which, 
however, is free when the man is gone, while many 
who knew and measured him survive. In such cir- 
cumstances judgment observes the juste milieu * 
being disentangled alike from the personal feeling, 
pro and con, inevitable in life, and from the igno- 
rance which grows rank over his grave when he has 
been long dead. 

But, after all, nothing is so difficult as portraiture ; 
for description is not life. A distinguished painter 
once said, referring to a tantalizingly elusive sitter : 
** I can do no more than just make a memorandum of 
such a face, and let fancy do the rest." 

In his outward man Wendell Phillips was cast in 
classic mould. His oratorical mother was Maia, the 



400 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Eloquent, and his father was Jupiter, the Thunderer. 
Above the middle height, his form was patterned 
after the best models of manhood, and closely re- 
sembled, by actual measurements, the Greek Apollo. 
He was neither stout nor thin, but retained from 
youth to age his suppleness and grace of proportion. 
Of nervous, sanguine temperament, his complexion 
was ruddy, and gave him the appearance of one 
whose soul looked through and glorified the body. 
Hence that singular radiance which was often start- 
ling. 

The head was finely set upon broad shoulders and 
a deep chest. The chin was full and strong, the 
lips red and somewhat compressed, the nose aqui- 
line, the eyes blue, small but piercing, the brow both 
broad and high, the hair of that tawny hue artists 
love, — 

" The golden treasure nature showers down 
On those foredoomed to wear Fame's golden crown." 

In middle life he lost a large part of his hair ; but 
this only served the more clearly to reveal the su- 
perb contour of the skull. His profile was fine cut 
as a cameo. In expression, the face was at once in- 
tellectual and serene — wore a look of resolute good- 
ness. His pose was easy and natural, every change 
of attitude being a new revelation of manly grace. 
No nobler physique ever confronted an audience. 
A patrician air accompanied him as inevitably as the 
nimbus does a .^^int on the canvas of Murillo or 
Titian. It is rare that an orator receives from 
nature such gifts of person. Thus his appearance 
was conciliatory and ingratiating. It filled and satis- 
fied the eye ere the ear was addressed. On rising. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 49 1 

he slowly buttoned his black frock-coat and advanced 
to his position on the platform with the easy deliber- 
ation of a gentleman stepping across his drawing- 
room. His attitude was a study for the sculptor — 
yet unconscious and natural. The weight of the 
body was usually supported upon the left foot, with 
the right slightly advanced at an easy angle. It 
was an attitude of combined firmness and repose — 
perfect economy of muscular effort. Critics felt the 
force of the orator's own remark : "In a public 
speaker physical advantages are half the battle." 

How describe the voice ? It was of no great range. 
In the higher register it was thin. But in the middle 
and lower notes, where he usually held it, it resem- 
bled the tones of Paganini's violin. It was smooth. 
It was sweet. It was penetrating. And it was so 
exquisitely modulated that every finest shade of 
thought, each most delicate distinction of expres- 
sion, was discriminated as he spoke. He had a 
faculty of pouring a world of meaning into those 
quiet utterances, — indignation, wit, sarcasm, sug- 
gestion, moral appeal, legal argument, what he 
would ; and all without once raising his voice. It 
was like Ole Bull's inspired playing on one string 
— that being more expressive, under his bow, than 
the whole instrument in any other hands. Connois- 
seurs have testified that no other speaker here or in 
Europe put such intense feeling into so small a com- 
pass of voice, scaling the heights and sounding the 
depths of oratory in a colloquial tone. In one of his 
lectures, speaking of a certain locality in Florence, 
he said : " As I walked the pavement I suddenly 
came upon this inscription, under my very feet, * On 
this spot, three hundred years ago, sat Dante !' ** 



492 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Tt was uttered simply, yet with such an entire change 
of voice and manner, that you saw what he saw — the 
image of the Tuscan poet who went down into hell. 
Dante was conjured into being and stood revealed 
in the solemn hush of that rhetorical pause. 

His enunciation was an added charm. Each word 
was as distinctly uttered as though it were a newly 
coined gold piece. Yet he never elocutionized. 
There was nothing pedantic in his utterance. Like 
every thing else about his oratory, it was natural — 
or seemed so. But as the words dropped in rhythmic 
succession from his lips, always without hesitation, 
each one the best that could possibly be chosen to 
express his thought, it was a revelation of the 
strength and beauty of our mother tongue. What 
you listened to seemed a cross between a strain of 
music and a poem. This rhythmic quality is diffi- 
cult to manage. It easily becomes sing-song. Ed- 
ward Everett, with all his cunning, carried it to ex- 
cess — was immeasurably measured. A close ob- 
server could frequently detect his hand covertly 
beating time to his words, like the baton of a leader 
of the orchestra. In Mr. Phillips the rhythm was 
felt rather than perceived. The cadence was lulling 
and beguiling, never obtrusive. In rate of utterance 
he was neither fast nor slow — slow enough to be 
distinctly heard, yet fast enough to give the impres- 
sion of animation. 

The orator's action comported with his style. Its 
effectiveness resided in its significance. He made 
many more gestures than he got credit for ; but 
they were so subordinated to the thought and so 
illustrative of it, that they eluded attention and 
seemed only parts of one whole. Hence their pro- 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 493 

priety and ease deceived all but sharp observers into 
a belief in their infrequency. There they were, 
nevertheless. He freely used the open palm, now 
with one hand, now with both. In the more moder- 
ate emphasis of feeling- he placed the index finger in 
the open palm. In the expression of ideas that were 
repugnant he employed the averted palm. Imagi- 
nation influenced the gestures and led to the temper- 
ate use of highly symbolic action — always, however, 
as a help to the language.' Thus the arms, the 
hands, the fingers became co-ordinate features with 
the countenance, the lips, the eyes, and were moulded 
into a consummate, poetic tout ensemble. Indeed, he 
impressed you as being unable to twist his form or 
use his limbs ungracefully. All the while there was 
no study, no attitudinizing. It seemed Phillips's 
way. 

" The keynote to the oratory of Wendell Phillips," remarks a 
competent critic, *' lay in this : that it was essentially conversa- 
tional, — the conversational raised to its highest power. Perhaps 
no orator ever spoke with so little apparent effort or began so 
entirely on the plane of his average hearers. It was as if he 
simply repeated, in a little louder tone, what he had just been 
saying to some familiar friend at his elbow. The effect was 
absolutely disarming. Those accustomed to spread-eagle elo- 
quence felt, perhaps, a slight sense of disappointment. Could 
this easy, effortless man be Wendell Phillips ? But he held them 
by his very quietness : it did not seem to have occurred to him 
to doubt his power to hold them. The poise of his manly figure, 
the easy grace of his attitude, the thrilling modulation of his 
perfectly trained voice, the dignity of his gesture, the keen pene- 
tration of his eye, all aided to keep his hearers in hand. The 
colloquialism was never relaxed ; but it was familiarity without 
loss of keeping. When he said isn't and wasn't, or even, like 



* Vide an interesting article on Mr, Phillips in the 4>idover Review^ 
vol. i., pp. 309 sqq., 1884. 



494 WENDELL riiiLLi rs. 

an Englishman, dropped his g's, it did not seem inelegant ; he 
might almost have been ungrammatical, and it would not have 
impaired the fine air of the man. Then, as the argument went 
on, the voice grew deeper, the action more animated, and the 
sentences came in a long, sonorous swell, still easy and grace- 
ful, but powerful as the soft stretching of a tiger's paw. He 
could be terse as Carlyle, or his periods could be as prolonged 
and cumulative as those of Choate or Evarts : no matter ; they 
carried in either case the same charm." ' 

In tone and manner, although thus conversational, 
Mr. Phillips was at the same time elevated. It has 
been said that speaking" which is merely conversa- 
tional has no lift to it ; the mind may be held by it, 
but is not impressed. On the other hand, speak- 
ing which has no ever3^-day manner as its basis is 
stilted and fatiguing. The orator should frame his 
style on the level of plain, common-sense talk. Then 
this ought to lead out and up toward vistas of cloud- 
land and the music of the spheres. "" In this regard 
Wendell Phillips is a model. He had many sur- 
prises of thought and diction ; but made most fre- 
quent use of short, terse sentences whose sense was 
felt the instant they struck the ear, and whose epi- 
grammatic point made them stick (and sometimes 
tingle) in the memory. 

It was this colloquial quality, infinitely varied yet 
without interruption, which made him the least te- 
dious of speakers. You heard him an hour, two 
hours, three hours — and were unconscious of the lapse 
of time. Indeed, he never seemed to be making a 
speech. It was no oration for the crown, with drum 



' Thomas Wentworth Higginson, in his obituary notice. 
''"Golden Age of American Oratory," by Edward G. Parker, 
Notice of Wendell Phillips. 



Wendell phillips. 495 

and trumpet declamation, — only a gentleman talking ! 
He had exactly the manner for an agitator, it was so 
entirely without agitation. This repose, fire under 
snow, enabled him to husband all his electricity and 
flash it out to magnetize the audience. 

But the matter of his speech was in sharp contrast 
with his manner. This was in constant movement, 
and sparkled with epigram, laughed with anecdote, 
vibrated with argument, thrilled with appeal, glowed 
with vivid description, abounded in apt quotation 
gleaned from the whole field of history, biography, 
and ethics, — a splendid panorama, brilliant as the 
essays of Macaulay, aglow with diffused fire. He 
was a great coiner of striking phrases ; as when he 
said, " Liberty, even in defeat, knows nothing but 
victory." He was master of epithets, which, when 
he affixed them, clung and stung ; as when he styled 
Rufus Choate a "political mountebank," and char- 
acterized Daniel Webster, after his famous (and in- 
famous) 7th of March speech in the Senate, as " Sir 
Pertinax McS3^cophant," and referred to the 
*' cuckoo lips of Edward Everett," and spoke of one 
of the mayors of the Boston of mob days as, " not a 
mayor, but a lackey in the mayor's chair." It was 
this astonishing contrast between the matter of his 
speech that resembled Vesuvius in full eruption, 
and the manner, as halcyon as a summer landscape, 
— it was this that bewildered while it riveted those 
who heard him for the first time. His foes were at 
the same moment angered by the matter and fasci- 
nated by the manner. The Richmo7td Inquirer, speak- 
ing of him before the Rebellion, said : " Wendell 
Phillips is an infernal machine set to music." 

Seldom moving, never outside of a small circle, 



4g6 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

and speaking in this self-contained way, of course 
he never lost his head. Addressing, as he did, audi- 
ences bitterly hostile through a great part of his 
career, — audiences not seldom assembled expressly 
to put him down, his serene self-possession placed at 
his service his whole battery of unparalleled re- 
sources ; and in these battles with the mob he never 
failed to conquer a hearing. He would tell a story ; 
he would make some prominent interrupter a target 
for his vvit ; he would shame the rioters into silence ; 
he would appeal to their better instincts ; he would 
demand fair play ; if the disturbance became too 
boisterous, he would turn to the reporter's table and 
say : ** Howl on : through these fingers I address 
an audience of 30,000,000 !" and thus pique the 
rioters into silence by curiosity : in one way or an- 
other, and without descending from his lofty pedestal 
of self-respect, he was sure to have his say, and in 
the most uncompromising style. 

Take as an illustration of his adroitness in man- 
aging an unruly crowd a passage from his speech 
at the Lovejoy meeting in Faneuil Hall, which made 
him famous, away back at the outset of his career — 
that marvellous extempore reply to Attorney-Gen- 
eral Austin. He had asserted that Lovejoy died for 
defending the freedom of the press. Then he 
added : 

" The disputed right which provoked the Revolution — taxa- 
tion without representation — is far beneath that for which he 
died. [Here there was a strong and general expression of dis- 
approbation, as though he were belittling the heroes of 1776. 
With a commanding gesture, Mr. Phillips cried :] One word, 
gentlemen. As much as thought is better than money ^ so much 
is the cause in v/hich Lovejoy died nobler than a mere question 
of taxes. Jame^ Otis thundered in this hall when the King did 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 497 

but touch his pocket. Imagine, if you can, his indignant elo- 
quence, had England offered to put a gag upon his lips." {Tre^ 
mendous cheering,^ 

Such instances might be multiplied ad infinitum. 
How well he could tell a story let this passage 
show — taken from one of his earlier addfesses : 

** That most eloquent of all Southerners, as I think Mr. Sar- 
gent S. Prentiss, of Mississippi, was addressing a crowd of four 
thousand people in his State, defending the tariff, and in the 
course of an eloquent period which rose to a beautitul climax, 
he painted the thrift, the energy, the comfort, the wealth, the 
civilization of the North, in glowing colors, — when there rose on 
the vision of the assembly, in the open air, a horseman of mag- 
nificent proportions ; and just at the moment of hushed atten- 
tion, when the voice of Prentiss had ceased and the applause 
was about to break forth, the horseman exclaimed, * D — the 
North ! ' The curse was so much in unison with the habitual 
feeling of a Mississippi audience that it quenched their enthusi- 
asm, and nothing but respect for the speaker kept them from 
cheering the horseman. Prentiss turned upon his lame foot, 
and said : 

" ' Major Moody, will you rein in that horse a moment ? * 

*' He assented. The orator went on : 

" ' Major, the horse on which you ride came from Upper Mis- 
souri ; the saddle that surmounts him came from Trenton, 
N. J. ; the hat on your head came from Danbury, Conn. ; the 
boots you wear came from Lynn, Mass. ; the linen on your shirt 
is Irish, and Boston made it up ; your broadcloth coat is of 
Lowell manufacture, and was cut in New York ; and if to-day 
you surrender what you owe the "d — North" you would sit 
stark naked.' " 

Frederick Douglass (himself one of the most effec- 
tive of orators) has well said : 

" Eloquent as Mr. Phillips was as a lecturer, he was far more 
effective as a debater. Debate was to him the flint and steel 
which brought out all his fire. His memory was wonderful. He 
would listen to an elaborate speech for hours, and, without a 



498 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

single note of what had been said, in writing, reply to every 
part of it as fully and completely as if the speech were written 
out before him. Those who heard him when not confronted by 
an opponent have a very limited comprehension of his amazing 
resources as a speaker." ' 

In power*^f invective, Mr. Phillips, by common 
acknowledgment, stands at the head of all orators, 
ancient or modern. He gave new meaning to the 
word PJiilippic. Certain it is that as it regards popu- 
lar effect, immediate effect, nothing equals this qual- 
ity on the platform — nothing can compensate the 
lack of it in an orator. As the immortality of Junius 
lies in his personalities, as Patrick Henry is best re- 
membered by his characterization of the dishonest 
contractor with whose name he made the colonies 
ring, so Wendell Phillips will ever be remembered 
because of those thunderbolts which he hurled so 
serenely ; and which, because of his calmness, en- 
chanted while they appalled. It was like witnessing 
a fire or a battle. 

As an instance of this, and also of the classic style 
of which he was master, study his lecture on 
" Idols," in which occurs the following celebrated 
passage referring to Rufus Choate : 

" Yet this is the model which Massachusetts offers to the 
Pantheon of the great jurists of the world ! 

*' Suppose we stood in that lofty temple of jurisprudence,— on 
either side of us the statues of the great lawyers of every age 
and clime, — and let us see what part New England — Puritan, 
educated, free New England — would bear in the pageant. Rome 
points to a colossal figure, and says, ' That is Papinian, who, 
when the Emperor Caracalla murdered his own brother, and 
ordered the lawyer to defend the deed, went cheerfully to death, 

' Address in Washington, D. C, before the colored people, on 
Wendell Phillips, after his funeral in 1884. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 499 

rather than sully his lips with the atrocious plea ; and that is 
Ulpian, who, aiding his prince to put the army below the law, 
was massacred at the foot of a weak, but virtuous throne.' 

" And France stretches forth her grateful hands, crying, 
* That is D'Aguesseau, worthy, when he went to face an en- 
raged king, of the farewell his wife addressed him — " Go ! for- 
get that you have a wife and children to ruin, and remember 
only that you have France to save." ' 

" England says, ' That is Coke, who flung the laurels of eighty 
years in the face of the first Stuart, in defence of the people. 
This is Selden, on every book of whose library you saw written 
the motto of which he lived worthy, " Before everything, Lib- 
erty !" That is Mansfield, silver-tongued, who proclaimed, 

' " Slaves cannot breathe in England ; if their lungs 
Receive our air, that moment they are free." 

This is Romilly, who spent life trying to make law synony- 
mous with justice, and succeeded in making life and property 
safer in every city of the empire. And that is Erskine, whose 
eloquence, spite of Lord Eldon and George III., made it safe to 
speak and to print.' 

" Then New England shouts, ' This is Choate, who made it 
safe to murder ; and of whose health thieves asked before they 
began to steal.' " ' 

These words are sufficiently sensational as they lie 
under the eye in cold type. Imagine, then, the 
effect as they fell from the lips of the orator. There 
is no more tremendous climax on record. 

No doubt Mr. Phillips, like all supreme speakers, 
was a born fighter. He had the cert arninis gaudia — 
the joy of disputation — common to intellectual gladi- 
ators. Occasionally, this got the better of his judg- 
ment, and he fought to win, as well as for the glory 
of God. But when it did, like a skilful rider, he 
soon recovered the reins of his conscience and made 



1 «« 



Speeches and Lectures,'* p. 253. 



500 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

glad amends. It must be conceded that rarely are 
such magnificent abilities so conscientiously directed. 

The orator almost always spoke without notes. 
On the few occasions when he used them they were 
an evident embarrassment : it was like an eagle walk- 
ing. At the start he was accustomed to prepare his 
speeches with care ; but as we have seen, his first 
great success was won off-hand, and " afterward,' 
as one of his intimates tells us, " during that period 
of incessant practice which Emerson makes the 
secret of his power, he relied generally upon his 
vast accumulated store of facts and illustrations, and 
his tried habit of thinking on his legs." Of course, 
his lectures (" The Lost Arts," " Street Life in 
Europe," " Daniel O'Connell," " Sir Harry Vane," 
and the rest) were all carefully prepared — though 
never written out. So also were some of his elabo- 
rate speeches, like those on " Disunion," and " Prog- 
ress," and the '' Phi Beta Kappa" oration at Cam- 
bridge, in the summer of 1881. But he was never 
so felicitous, never so thrilling, never so command- 
ing as when most extemporaneous, — and especially 
if hissed or mobbed. Then his port and utterance 
afforded a spectacle of the moral sublime. 

The truth is, he was ahvays preparing. He read, 
studied, thought, with one eye on the platform. 
Whatever could " point a moral or adorn a tale" he 
carefully appropriated and thrust into some mental 
pigeon-hole, where he could lay hands on it and bring 
it out on occasion. In speaking of his habit of 
preparation, he said : " The chief thing I aim at is to 
master my subject. Then I earnestly try to get the 
audience to think as I do." 

Mr. Phillips had a theory that speaking and writing 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 50I 

require such different habits of mind that success in 
one arena makes failure quite sure in the other. In 
proof of this he used to cite Patrick Henry, Fisher 
Ames, Sargent S. Prentiss, Tom Corwin, and Henry 
Clay, monarchs of the platform, but who seldom 
wrote ; and whose speeches are dry reading — prob- 
ably because their reputation dwarfs the text, which 
seems doubly lifeless without the speaker's person- 
ality, like a body when the spirit is departed. Ac- 
cordingly, he took little interest in his speeches after 
they were delivered. Each had a purpose at the 
moment, performed its errand, and was left to die. 
Even his lectures he did not care to see in print. 
He thought they would not read as he made them 
sound — nor do they. Yet Wendell Phillips refutes 
his own theory. For though, of course, we miss 
the living presence, spite of this drawback, the pub- 
lished speeches are wonderfully stirring, and seem, 
in Milton's phrase, " The precious hfe-blood of a 
master spirit treasured up on purpose to a life be- 
yond life." They afford, beyond all comparison, 
whether in America or in England, the best speci- 
mens in literature of extemporaneous eloquence. 
Some of them suggest Burke in the Senate and Plato 
in the groves of the Academy. Read, for example, 
the " Philosophy of the Abolition Movement," ' in 
which he vindicates the justice and shows the reason 
of the Anti-Slavery crusade in a diction brocaded 
with splendor. Or turn to the speech on ** Woman's 
Rights," ' delivered at Worcester, in Massachusetts, 
in 185 1, — a presentation which, affirms George 
William Curtis, '* more than any other single im- 



^ " Speeches and Lectures," p. q8. * lb,, p. 11. 



502 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

pulse, launched that question upon the sea of popu- 
lar controversy." ' Yes ; the printed speeches are a 
precious legacy — a memento and an inspiration. 
Would that we had more of them ! 

In commenting upon his characteristics as a speak- 
er, Clarence Cook observes that they " were a logi- 
cal, lawyer-like setting out of his subject and great 
closeness in his argument, so that if he went off a 
little to meet an interruption, or to answer a ques- 
tion, or to parry the thrust of an insult or threat in- 
terjected, he quickly returned and beat out the iron 
on his anvil." * 

The oratory of Wendell Phillips illustrated the 
truth that, after all, character is the secret of the 
nighest speech. x\s the Sage of Concord puts it : 
" There is no eloquence without a man behind it." 
Academic rhetoric may charm ; the arts of the 
trained advocate, the hired argument of an Ogden 
Hoffman or a Rufus Choate may astonish ; the selfish 
appeals of the political orator may win noisy ap- 
plause from those who hope to devour the loaves 
and fishes of party ; but the oratory that holds the 
present and moulds the future must have for a basis 
the moral element. Eloquent utterance //^^i" charac- 
ter — what can equal that ? 

Here Mr. Phillips was supreme. Everybody 
knew, he made those who heard him feel that he 
was not posing for popular effect. He stood the 
embodiment of a cause. Every sentence was sur- 
charged with moral conviction. It was perceived 



' ** Wendell Phillips," a eulogy delivered before the municipal 
authorities of Boston, Mass., April iSth, 1884. 
' In Johnson's New Universal Cydopcedia, in loco. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. ^O^ 

that he suppressed rather than expressed all he felt. 
From opening to close his words, distinct and softly 
rounded as though stamped on satin, were warm 
with the composed passion of an honest nature face 
to face with heaven-defying wickedness. Such 
speech has the force of dynamite. It convicts while 
it convinces. It compels respect by deserving it. 

The period in which Mr. Phillips lived was prolific 
of great speakers — like all eras of revolution. They 
march in battalions, on both sides of Mason and 
Dixon's line. In a broad characterization, those of 
the South were more declamatory ; those of the 
North were more argumentative. The Southerners 
excelled in outburst power ; the Northerners were, 
as a rule, less volcanic. Those talked bullets ; these 
believed in ideas. It was the difference between 
rain in summer and rain in winter — the same ele- 
ment ; but in one case liquid, and in the other case 
snow At the same time it must be confessed that 
the North did not lack for tongues of fire. 

If we compare Wendell Phillips with others of his 
contemporaries, we shall find that he was excelled 
by one and another in special qualities. At the 
South, Calhoun was more logical in his general style, 
Clay was more thrilling, Prentiss was more pictu- 
resque. At the North, Webster had a more sustained 
splendor of diction and greater majesty. Everett 
surpassed him in elaboration, and indulged in more 
frequent bursts of beaut}^ Choate was more elec- 
tric. Corwin better pleased the crowd — was half 
clown and the other half genius. Sumner was more 
pretentiously the scholar, and excelled in copious 
illustration that exhausted a subject to the bottom. 
Chapin oftener soared. Beecher abounded more in 



504 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

the bravuras ot oratory — was an embodied thunder- 
storm. Lincohi was superior in the Eastern art of 
story-telling — the ability to pack the entire meaning 
of the hour in a pat anecdote. Douglass had more 
pathos. Curtis might be better depended upon as a 
speaker for set occasions. Ingersoll exceeded him 
in the art ad captandum vulgus. Nevertheless, in the 
perfect moulding of an orator he surpassed each of 
these. On the whole he was a more interesting and 
instructive speaker than ariy of his contemporaries 
in their palmiest days. This is superlative praise ; 
but the record is true. Let it be written while liv- 
ing witnesses can attest it and before his eloquence, 
like the song of Orpheus, fades into a doubtful 
tradition. 

Yes ; as an orator Wendell Phillips was peerless. 
He possessed that quality which Emerson thought 
the highest of all, — of being " something that cannot 
be skipped or undermined." Those who were priv- 
ileged to hear him often, and who were familiar as 
well with the best eloquence on both sides of the 
Atlantic, will agree with Professor Bryce, the phil- 
osophic Englishman whose recent delineation of our 
institution is the only rival of D'Tocqueville's " De- 
mocracy in America," — that ** he was in the opinion 
of competent critics one of the first orators of the 
present centurj^, and not more remarkable for the 
finish than for the transparent simplicity of his style, 
which attained its highest effects by the most direct 
and natural methods." * 

The greatest of compliments is imitation. The 
whole school of Anti-Slavery speakers echoed the 



1 *« 



The American Commonwealth," vol. ii., p. 659. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 505 

manner and especially the intonations of Wendell 
Phillips. More important than this, his style set a 
fashion. It taught the bar, the pulpit, the platform 
the value of high-bred conversationalism as the most 
effective vehicle of thought and emotion. With his 
advent roar and rant went out of date. The era of 
trained naturalism opened. Thus he made every 
speaker and every audience his debtor. 



VI. 

THE MAN. 

Turning now Irom the orator, we pass to a criti- 
cal estimate of the man. 

Genius is of three kinds. Some men are great in 
a single faculty, which overshadows the rest and 
rules in the realm of mind ; others, in kindred facul- 
ties with mutual affinities ; others still in the general 
range and elevation of all the higher powers. The 
genius of Wendell Phillips, as Theodore D. Weld 
points out, in a passage of wise discrimination, was of 
this latter type. " It was no king among his other 
powers, but a ruler among rulers, each co-ordinate 
with each in a balanced equality. Strong in each of 
its elements, ethic, aesthetic, logical, philosophical, 
critical, emotional, imaginative, all these with con- 
science and indomitable will were the rounded man 
himself. The large stature of his powers, their ex- 
alted level, each a vital constituent of his genius, 
made him in their combination what he was — an 
aggregation of great mental and moral forces crys- 
tallized into character." 

He had feminine intuition with masculine reason. 
The whole ground of rights and wrongs, not only in 
gross but in detail, not more in the coarser than in 
the most refined features of both, he instantly saw, 
grasped, and discriminated. 

When he had chosen, there he stood, serene, self- 



WENDELL I'HlLLll'S. 50; 

poised, never lonely though alone, untroubled oy 
doubt with everybody else in a quandary, — 

*' The star that looked on tempests and was still unshaken.** 

He had both kinds of courage ; that highest, the 
moral, which held him firm, true, unmoved by scoff 
of foe or kiss of friend ; and that lowest, the physi- 
cal, which led him to confront a mob or brave assas- 
sination with the nonchalance of a veteran cam- 
paigner stooping to tie his shoe in a rain of bullets. 

The genius of Mr. Phillips was highly cultivated. 
All that early training, later culture, and foreign 
travel could do to polish and refine had been done. 
When, therefore, such a man so dowered left the 
Palace of Pharaoh for the brickyard, the companion- 
ship of princes for the society of slaves, the force of 
his conviction and the fibre of his manhood may be 
measured. 

He retained through life the taste and habits of 
scholarship. The classics were often in his hands 
and on his lips. Mediaeval Latin, too (the language 
of the learned world for a thousand years), was an 
open book to him. We might change a little and 
apply to him that which Macaulay quotes Denham 
as felicitously saying of Cowley : " He spoke the 
tongue, but did not wear the clothes of the ancients." 
Of modern languages, French was his favorite, and 
he had the accent of a Parisian ; but he also read 
German, Italian, and Spanish. 

While in college Mr. Phillips formed a habit, 
which he never lost, of making special historic peri- 
ods subjects of microscopic investigation. Thus he 
spent a twelvemonth in studying the English Revo- 
lution of 1640 — the seed-time of modern politicaJ 



508 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

ethics and religious opinion. He ransacked every 
speech, memoir, novel, pla}^ from Clarendon to 
Godwin, and made himself the best authority of his 
time upon that epoch. In the same way he devoted 
a year to the reign of George III. — the birth-time of 
American liberty. The history of the Colonial and 
Revolutionary period he knew by heart. The story 
which his friend Motley retold with such graphic 
power, that wonderful romance of Holland, he had 
at the end of his tongue. And Lamartine was hardly 
more familiar than Phillips with the French Revo- 
lution — in which, as Carlyle said, the eighteenth cen- 
tury committed suicide by blowing its own brains 
out. 

He studied chemistry as other men read novels, 
for amusement. He was fond of those authors who 
(like the late Charles Reade) freshen things. He 
kept himself thoroughly acquainted with modern 
governmental action ; and General Butler, a com- 
petent witness on such a point, affirms that after he 
quitted the law he by no means laid aside its stud}' : 
" Whoever in his later years had an opportunity to 
converse with him on legal topics was surprised to 
find how thoroughly he kept pace with the modifica- 
tions of legal principles as shown in current decisions 
of the courts." 

With reference to his scholarly preferences an 
intimate friend writes : 

" The character of a man is revealed by a knowledge of his 
heroes. Those of Mr. Phillips in English history were Sir 
Walter Raleigh, Andrew Marvel, Pym, Sir Harry Vane, Crom- 
well, Chesterfield, De Foe, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, John 
Hunter, Tames Watt, and Brindley. In American history they 
were Jay, Franklin, Hamilton, Sam Adams, and Eli Whitney. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 509 

Among novelists. Richardson was a favorite ; Scott he knew by 
heart. In French literature he preferred Sully, Rochefoucauld, 
De Retz, Pascal, Tocqueville, Guizot, and Victor Hugo. In Eng- 
lish, his pets were Swift, Ben Jonson, Jeremy Taylor, Massen- 
ger, Milton, Southey, Lamb, the elder D'lsraeli, and ' all of 
Horace Walpole.* He was late in opening Shakespeare. Eliza- 
beth Barrett Browning he regarded as the first of modern poets. 
And he thought that George Eliot and Charlotte Bronte saw life 
deeper and truer than either Dickens or Thackeray, though they 
lacked the artistic skill of their more celebrated contempo- 
raries.'* 

At the same time Mr. Phillips was an omnivorous 
reader of newspapers. These have been called the 
American Bible. We may be sure, however, that 
he scanned them, not with idolatrous eyes, but for 
the light they threw upon contemporaneous affairs 
— for this, and for their inevitable forecast of what 
lay ahead. He knew, none better, the charm of 
anecdote, the value of illustrations fetched from his- 
tory and biography. His speeches abound in apt 
cullings from these sources. This wide range and 
varied taste stored his mind with effective stories and 
telling facts. When once on his legs and in full 
career he laid the hand of a master upon the entire 
encyclopaedia of knowledge, and seemed " crowned 
with the spoil of every science and decked with the 
wreath of every muse." 

Mr. Phillips has been termed the latest and the 
largest of the Puritans. The elixir of conscience 
diffused through his clerical ancestors was concen- 
trated and potted in him. This gave him an unparal- 
leled moral ascendency. His career was a splendid 
exhibition of conscientiousness. Born in the purple, 
equipped with intellectual gifts and culture, and 
dowered with personal charms and accomplish- 



5IO WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

ments admirably fitted to secure him any place to 
which he might aspire in society, in the Senate, or 
at the bar, had he consented to file down his truth 
and turn but a little aside from the narrow path of 
conviction ; he left his decorated world, sacrificed 
his brilliant prospects, threw up his early friendships 
and scorned the allurements which fascinate man- 
kind, — all for a principle. Such self-denial is sub- 
lime. Since Christ, life for others has been the high- 
est kind of life. Hence Mr. Phillips takes an undis- 
puted place among heroes and saints. 

Of his benevolence what was his whole life but the 
expression ? There are some who, while lavish of 
words and even of personal efforts, are stingy when 
the coin demanded is coin current. Not so Mr. 
Phillips. His liberality was unbounded. Literally, 
he gave away a fortune. Among his effects after his 
death was found an old memorandum book, cover- 
ing the years from 1845 to 1875. In this he credits 
himself with personal gifts aggregating over $65,000 
And this was but a fraction of what he bestowed — 
only what he handed out at home and with the 
memorandum book within reach. Some of the en- 
tries are curious. They show that he supported 
many families in whole or in part ; and not a few 
well-known names figure among his beneficiaries. 
Page after page reads like this, — John Brown figur- 
ing conspicuously : 

John Brown $10.00 

A poor Italian 2. 00 

Mrs. Garnaut 10.00 

Poor man 1. 00 

Refugee $.00 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 5 II 

The orator's wealth has been exaggerated. He 
inherited something from his parents. His wife also 
added to the common stock. But it is certain that 
their joint fortunes never exceeded $100,000. Dur- 
ing many years Mr. Phillips made large sums by his 
lectures. His income from this source ranged from 
$10,000 to $15,000 a year. He might have lived in 
luxurious ease. No one would have criticised. In- 
stead of that, he dwarfed his wants to the minimum. 
His house was in a quarter of Boston never fashion- 
able, and at last given over to shops. It was almost 
bare : partly, no doubt, because the lifelong invalid- 
ism of Mrs. Phillips and the lack of children deprived 
him of an incentive to dwell under a lordlier roof- 
tree ; but chiefly in order that he might be free to 
spend in unselfishness. That plain house — was it not 
a Mecca ? The panting fugitive knew it, and tested 
its hospitality and strong protection. The unfortu- 
nate of whatever color, sex, age, social condition, 
wore the threshold thin with their needy feet. 
Who ever heard of anybody's being turned away 
unpitied, unaided ? Aside from this unstinted private 
charity, he gave like a prince and through decades 
to the great causes that were near and dear to him. 
Many were the students, black and white, whom he 
supported. He would frequently travel long dis- 
tances to deliver a lecture for the benefit of some 
deserving scholar, to whom he would make over the 
whole proceeds. 

During the Anti-Slavery period, when invited to 
lecture here, there, and yonder, and asked to name 
his price, his habitual response was : 

** If you want a literary lecture, the price is so and 
§0 [a high one]. But if you will let me speak on 



512 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

slavery I will come for nothing and pay my own 
expenses !" 

This was a sly way he had of bribing unfriendly 
lyceums — and it usually succeeded. Even when he 
spoke on a literary theme, conservative committees 
were always fearful lest this dealer in forensic fire- 
brands should smuggle into his sentences gunpowder 
enough to blow up the hall. They listened between 
fear and admiration, half expecting an explosion, and 
felt as Burns did when he wrote his " Epistle to a 
Young Friend :" 

' Perhaps it may turn out a sang, 
Perhaps turn out a sermon." 

When Mr. Phillips died he left almost nothing. 
He said to a friend only two or three days before 
his death that he had no wish to leave a fortune to 
anybody or anj^thing ; that his idea of living was to 
walk with open heart and open hand from day to 
day ; and that he had done all he could in this way 
— he had been his own executor. 

His general benevolence assumed a special and 
tender form where ** Ann" was concerned. His de- 
votion to her was idyllic. He gave her an amount 
and quality of attention quite unprecedented. Once 
when her sickness deepened into immediate danger, 
he waited on her for sixty days without leaving the 
house. He found in that invalid's chamber oppor- 
tunity for the exercise of every domestic virtue. 
Denied the experience ot fatherhood, he made 
"Ann" both wife and child. Was she secluded.'^ 
He shut himself in. Was she lonely ? He became 
her sufficient companion. Was she in pain ? He 
medicined her Avith sympathy. Did she want this, 
would she have that ? It was laid at her feet. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 513 

When in town, he went to market and ordered the 
dinner, because he ''knew Ann's tastes." Indiffer- 
ent about the table for himself, he became a very 
epicure for her. He would buy two boxes of straw- 
berries, so that she might have the best of each. He 
would go over a bushel of potatoes to get a peck of 
one size to bake for her breakfast. In purchasing 
peas, he would handle every pod to see that they 
were soft and tender, '^ as Ann wanted them. " Win- 
ter or summer, pleasant or stormy, he might fre- 
quently be seen at night foraging for " Ann," who 
had a sudden invalid's whim for chicken or ice 
cream. There were times, of course, when the pecul- 
iar ailment of Mrs. Phillips made her fretful and 
exacting. He never lost his temper or his patience 
on such occasions, was never hurried or flurried, but 
went about low-voiced and composed, uncomplain- 
ing and attentive. Womanhood owes Wendell Phil- 
lips a heavy debt. But no other item in the indebted- 
ness is so heavy as the gratitude due him for that 
knight-errantry of half a century. 

Under his own roof Mr. Phillips was quiet, — 
almost taciturn. He was the most unexacting and 
gentle of men — grateful for any attention. He read 
to Mrs. Phillips and entertained her with outside 
news daily, but this was usually at or about tea- 
time. The evenings at home he passed in his own 
study, reading, writing, meditating, as the demands 
upon him or his mood might dictate. Callers were 
always welcome, and were sure, whatever their 
errand, of a patient hearing and a gracious dismis- 
sion. 

In M:\ Phillips there was no guile. His nature, 
like his life, was open and without concealment. 



514 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Neither was there a trace of self-display, nor hardly 
of self-consciousness. He thought of himself last 
and least, spent almost nothing upon himself, and 
made no provision for posthumous fame. Never 
were equally great powers wedded to such modesty 
nor enshrined in a form so gracious and urbane. 

He had no personal enemies. In private life all 
said of him : 

" None knew thee but to love thee. 
Nor named thee but to praise." 

In his personal habits Mr. Phillips was as conserv- 
ative as he was radical in his thought and speech. 
We have mentioned his attachment to his home for 
forty years. In the same way he frequented one 
tailoring establishment for half a century. He had 
his hair trimmed by one barber for nearly two gen- 
erations. He loved Washington Street, in Boston, as 
Dr. Johnson did Fleet Street, in London, and strolled 
along its pavements with serene enjoyment, indiffer- 
ent to newer thoroughfares. He always shaved 
himself. He always blacked his own boots. On 
these points he was extremely particular — and on 
one other, viz., the quality of his linen ; which he 
insisted should be absolutely free from cotton and 
cobweb fine. 

Thus loving the old, while preaching the new ; 
rooted after the flesh in the past, while soaring in 
spirit into the future ; moving like a moss-back along 
the grooves of custom, while pleading for a recon- 
struction of the whole social order : Wendell Phil- 
lips was an embodied contradiction ; — an animated 
antithesis, himself more epigrammatic than the most 
striking phrase he ever coined. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 515 

In fact, there are traces of this personal conserva- f^ 
tism even in his radicalism : as when in denouncing- 
a bad government he was careful not to denounce all 
government ; or when in condemning Pro-Slaverj ^ 
churches, he upheld Christianity ; or when in de- 
manding women's rights, he defended marriage as 
Christ taught it and as Christians have practised it. 
Radical though he was, he was not an anarchist, nor 
an atheist, nor a free-lover. 

Moreover, as he combined radicalism and conserv- 
atism in himself, so he was a singular compound of 
strength and gentleness, impetuosity and calmness, 
stoicism and feeling. It was like fire under snow. 
The same contrast marked his manners, which were 
at once patrician and democratic , not arrogant, 
still less obtrusively affable ; but tinctured by a dig- 
nified yet kindly reserve which commanded some 
measure of deference from all who came in contact 
with him. 

There was a marked resemblance between his 
public and private bearing— the same easy grace, 
the same unaffected simplicity, the same honeyed 
cadence of tone. One got a just idea of his oratory 
from his carriage and utterance on the sidewalk or 
at the hearthstone. This charm of manner, together 
with his wealth of knowledge, made him the most 
instructive and delightful of companions — when he 
would talk. Because, as a rule, he preferred to 
listen ; which he explained by saying : 

" I learn something from every one." 

In his dress the orator was simple but neat, and 
near enough to the mode not to appear singular. 
He had the enviable faculty, often commented upon, 
of never having his garments appear either shabby 



5l6 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

or new. Indeed, he showed his exquisite refinement 
in his clothing as in everything else. It was all-per- 
vading. As no one ever heard him say a coarse 
thing or tell an indelicate story, so he was never 
seen in a " loud " cravat or an ultra coat. 

From first to last Mr. Phillips was an unshaken 
believer in the people. His republicanism was based 
on an indestructible faith in the average capacity 
and trustworthiness of the race. He held, with John 
Bright, that the first five hundred men who pass in 
the Strand would make as good a parliament as that 
which sits at St. Stephen's. He believed with his 
favorite Rochefoucauld that all are wiser than any. 
He had the feeling, which in his case was a passion, 
that responsibility will educate the lowest into self- 
control, and thorough self-control into fitness for 
popular government. Hence his pleas for the 
negroes, for the Irishmen, for the laborer, and for 
woman. He loved to quote those words which 
the younger D' Israeli puts into the mouth of one of 
his heroes in " Vivian Grey :" " The people, Mr. 
Grey, are not often wrong." Not that Mr. Phillips 
esteemed the sentiment of a given community at a 
given time to be correct. His life of ceaseless oppo- 
sition to the popular opinion proves this. He be- 
lieved in men not in esse^ but \n posse — in the divine 
possibilities wrapped up in human nature. His 
whole career is a magnificent commentary on this 
faith. 

Yet if others doubt this truth, he of all men might 
have doubted — he, whose hfe was lived under the 
frown of public opinion ; he, whose chosen function 
was battle with an ignorant majority ; he, whose 
most sacred ideals were crucified amid the execra- 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. ^If 

tions of the mob. Just the same he went serenely 
on, and appealed from Philip drunk to Philip sober 
— from the people ill-informed to the people better 
infornied ; and was sure that to-morrow would 
rectify to-day. 

" But," remarks Mr. George William Curtis, 
" while he cherished this profound faith in the peo- 
ple, and because he cherished it, he never flattered 
the mob, nor hung upon its neck, nor pandered to 
its passion, nor suffered its foaming hate or its exul- 
tant enthusiasm to touch the calm poise of his reg- 
nant soul. ' * Whether the cro \vd hissed or applauded, 
he stood their friend and teacher. His confidence in 
their ultimate position did not intermit. How else 
could he have been their Tribune ? 

Here his example is beyond praise. At a time 
when educated men too often borrow their tone from 
London and Berlin ; when it is fashionable to hem 
and haw over universal suffrage ; when guzd nuncs 
suggest, if they do not assert that the Fathers were 
wrong when they built the Republic upon the rock 
of popular sovereignty ; — it is refreshing, it is in- 
spiring to come face to face with his unqualified faith 
in the wisdom and durability of the American idea. 

As he believed in the American idea, so he be- 
lieved in the American method of reform. " I 
know," said he, " what reform needs and all it needs 
in a land where discussion is free, the press untram- 
melled, and where public halls protect debate. Sub- 
mit to risk your daily bread, expect social ostracism, 
count on a mob now and then, * be in earnest, don't 
equivocate, don't excuse, don't retreat a single inch,* 
and you will be finally heard." In this country 
thought is more explosive than dynamite, unfettered 



< 



5l8 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

lips are better than secret societies, the ballot is 
surer than the bayonet — such was his political creed. 
Thus his career is a grand object-lesson, teaching 
the efficacy of constitutional agitation. 

It is not easy to estimate his influence. The diffi- 
culty is due to his exceptional position. In weighing 
the character of a statesman, for instance, we might 
refer to the public measures he introduced or ads'O- 
cated, the treaties he negotiated, the party he led. 
In measuring a great lawyer it would be easy to 
catalogue the famous cases he argued, to paint the 
juries he mesmerized into submission, to indicate 
the laws he wrote or expounded. Or in character- 
izing an inventor, the service he rendered could be 
distinctly named and traced in all its helpful rami- 
fications. But this man stood alone. He had no 
party. He belonged to no church. 

In an important sense, however, this very isola- 
tion increased his influence. Belonging nowhere, 
he belonged everywhere. He won early recognition 
as a continental censor. He was the public prose- 
cutor for humanity. Standing for half a century the 
most prominent figure on the platform ; speaking 
incessantly, and always to large audiences, he cer- 
tainly did more than any other individual to create 
the public sentiment which by and by seized the 
hand of Abraham Lincoln and wrote the proclama- 
tion of emancipation. In those years, and since, he 
was a tireless seed-planter. Through the afternoon 
and evening of his life he w^as in close touch with 
clergymen, editors, teachers, statesmen — the creators 
of public opinion : a leader of the leaders. 

He was such a consummate master of the art of 
putting things that his mere statement was argu- 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 519 

ment. He gave to the causes he espoused a stand- 
ing in the court of intellect and scholarship — which 
they usually sadly needed. Thus he made first Abo- 
lition, and then Woman's Rights, and then Total 
Abstinence, and then Labor Reform, each in its turn 
a hated and outcast name, respectable and respected 
in a social and mental and learned sense by identify- 
ing himself with them and flinging over their discus- 
sion the graces of his genius. The large result of 
his labors is triumphantly avouched and everywhere 
acknowledged in so far as his Anti-Slavery i-ecord 
is concerned. 

" Let no one despise the negro any more," ex- 
claimed a distinguished man of letters after hearing 
the orator, '' he has given us Wendell Phillips !" 

Naturally, he is the hero of the colored people. 
He stands first, and there is no second, in the affec- 
tion of the educated among the race he did so much 
to lift. ** He knew this class better/' remarks Rob- 
ert Purvis (a magnificent specimen of it), " than any 
one else, and sympathized more keenly with its 
aspirations. With us his name is sainted and his 
words are law." 

Critics allege in disparagement of Mr. Phillips's 
influence that he made no disciples and left no fol- 
lowers. This is only apparently true. He never 
aimed at personal aggrandizement. He was a re- 
former — not a politician ; a propounder of truth — 
not a stereotyper of it into statutes. Such a func- 
tion was inconsistent with immediate popularity. 
On principle, he kept a quarter of a century ahead. 
Hence, the times had and have to grow up to him. 
But while his views have seldom been adopted in 
their length and breadth, they have infected and in- 



520 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

creasingly dominated the mind of the country. He 
had and has the secret intellectual support of the 
educated classes. In life he won the hearts of young 
men, — especially in seats of learning, who, when he 
was announced to speak, crowded the hall, and 
could not be kept away by any device of old-fogy- 
ism. This ascendency he is likely to keep. 

Another criticism touches the Agitator's use of 
invective. But if he wore the thunder-robe, it was 
a stern sense of duty that impelled him to put it on. 
In an age when the public conscience was asleep, it 
was his function to startle and alarm. His denunci- 
ation in such circumstances was true kindness — the 
kindness of the surgeon who cuts to cure. There 
was never any malice in the blow he struck, an}^ 
envy in the shaft he sped. 

The personalities of Mr. Phillips were born of 
moral indignation, in part ; and in part they were 
the result of circumstances. When he began to dis- 
cuss slavery there was a conspiracy of silence. Men 
said: "You shall not talk on this subject." When 
he insisted upon speaking, the conspiracy of silence 
became a conspiracy of deafness. Men said : " Very 
well, talk on ; but our ears are our ovvn. We will 
not hear you." Slavery hid itself behind lawyers, 
and said : " I am legal !" behind merchants, and 
said : " I am respectable !" behind statesmen, and 
said : "I am patriotic !" behind clergymen, and 
said : " I am religious !" It could only be assailed 
through these men. Nor would the community 
listen to a mere ethical discussion. Hence Phillips 
•struck at slavery through its defenders. The howl 
of some wounded popular idol forced attention. 
Himself the calmest and sweetest of men, the Agita- 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 521 

tor used invective as a weapon. It used to be said 
that he never slew an antagonist but with a sun- 
beam. And it has been conceded that most of his 
criticisms of public men history justifies. 

Complaint is made that after the abolition of 
slavery Mr. Phillips continued to use the same ter- 
rible weapon, — that sunstroke is as fatal as knife or 
pistol. The answer is easy. Are not the lords of 
the loom as objectionable as were the lords of the 
lash ? Ought not the makers of drunkards to be 
pilloried in the contempt of the community ? Legree 
on the plantation is not more hateful than Legree in 
the counting-room. A doctor of divmity screening 
slavery is no more monstrous than a doctor of 
divinity defending grog-sellers. If men do not want 
to be stigmatized they must not act basely. Deco- 
rous rascals can be frightened into decency even 
when they are bad at heart. Exposure has terrors 
that deter from evil. Thus invective is a whip and 
a spur. It was necessary yesterday, and is useful 
to-day. Welcome the man who is an embodied Day 
of Judgment. 

It has been charged that Mr. Phillips showed a 
failure of judgment in his later years. The same 
charge was brought against his earlier judgment 
until success crowned it. Perhaps it is only because 
he is still ahead that his judgment is again im- 
peached. When the agitation of Temperance, Home 
Rule, Labor and Capital, the Treatment of the In- 
sane, Woman's Rights, Finance, Municipal Misgov- 
ernment, the Indian Question, Oppressed National- 
ities, the Corruption of Parties, Chinese Enfranchise- 
ment (eleven reforms which he discussed for years) 
shall be finally closed, it is more than probable that, 



522 WENDELL PHILLTPS. 

like " x\bou Ben Adhem's name," in Leigh Hunt's 
poem, Wendell Phillips will again head the list of 
benefactors. " Let those who say he did not under- 
stand Labor and Capital," cries Joseph Cook, ** wait 
fifty years, until Macaulay's Huns and Vandals ap- 
pear on this continent, and then ask whether Wen- 
dell Phillips understood the necessities of the case." 
In certain features, Phillips strikingly resembled 
Milton. This which the brilliant essayist wrote of 
the poet would equally fit the orator : 

'* He pressed into the forlorn hope. When his opinion seenr.ed 
lii<ely to prevail he passed on to other subjects. There is no 
more hazardous enterprise than that of bearing the torch of 
truth into those dark and infected recesses in which no light has 
ever shone. But it was his choice and pleasure to penetrate the 
noisome vapors and to brave the terrible explosion. Those who 
most disapprove of his opinions must respect the hardihood with 
which he maintained them. He, in general, left to others the 
credit of expounding and defending the popular parts of his 
creed. He took his stand upon those which the great body of 
his countrymen reprobated as criminal or derided as paradoxi- 
cal. His radiant and beneficent career resembled that of the 
god of light and fertility." 

No ; we have no apologies to make for Wendell 
Phillips. What, did he never err ? He did : he was 
human. But his mistakes, as in his estimate of Lin- 
coln, of Johnson, of Grant, were in judgment, never 
in conduct. His errors concerned men and measures, 
not ethics. His life was governed by a divine polar- 
ity. His twin maxims were justice and love. They 
held him true, — and will any man, until God abdi- 
cates. Hence, 

" nothing is here for tears, 



No weakness, no contempt, dispraise, nor blame ; 
Nothing but well and fair." 



WENDELt. PHILLIPS. " ^^^ 

In the life of St. Bernard by Gregory the Great 
(historian worthy of his hero), it is related that at 
the hour when holy hymns exhale from- the cloister 
in the midst of silence and darkness, the man of 
God was gazing heavenward through the grated 
window of his cell. Suddenl}- there shone round 
about him a dazzling light in which every form of 
beauty that could bewitch the senses, every subtle 
temptation that could fascinate the mind, every 
allurement that could damn the soul, floated before 
his eyes as though gathered to a focus in one ray of 
sunshine. " He saw it," says the inscription, which 
may still be read in the tower upon Monte Casino 
where he dwelt, "and scorned it." Wendell Phil- 
lips had two similar visions and made two similar 
answers. The first was in his youth, when the 
sirens came and sang their seductions to him, offer- 
ing him the world and the glory of it, if he would 
forswear philanthropy. The second came in his 
prime. The war was ended. Slavery was dead. 
His name was on all lips. His reputation as the 
orator of the successful cause was cosmopolitan. 
He might have been the most popular and courted 
of Americans. The Governorship of his native State, 
a seat in the lower House of Congress, the Senator- 
ship — any honor was within his easy reach. In such 
circumstances, his continued choice of hated causes, 
his rigid application of his principles to the reforms 
that were still unwon, his dedication of his powers 
and his ripe experience to the service not of one race 
alone, but of hvimanity, his deliberate rejection of 
the crown and acceptance of the cross, — was the 
grandest reach of his career ; grander than that early 
self-surrender, because this was made at an age 



524 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

when he had full knowledge of the meaning and 
value of all he forfeited. From that hour, instead of 
falling off, his character and influence took on new 
grandeur. 

The record is made, — so far, at least, as to fix his 
name and fame " 'twixt Orion and the Pleiades." 
We may say of him as Grattan said of Fox : "You 
must measure such a mind by parallels of latitude." 
Nay, we may apply to him his own words spoken 
over Garrison's coffin : *' Serene, fearless, marvel- 
lous man ! mortal, with so few shortcomings !" 

He will not be replaced. When Dr. Johnson died, 
Gerard Hamilton exclaimed: "Johnson is dead. 
Let us go to the next best ; nobody can be said to 
put you in mind of Johnson." So we cry : Phillips 
is dead. We go to the next best ; there is no 
OTHER Wendell Phillips. 



VIL 

PHILLIPSIANA. 

We throw together in this chapter a few sayings, 
stories, and epigrams of Mr. Phillips. He was a 
great utterer of such sentences, and the collection 
might easily be swelled into a volume. But the lack 
of space enforces brevity. 

Men cry out against sentiment as though it were weakness. 
But what is Bunker Hill Monument ? Sentiment ! Why did 
Massachusetts send the bust of Sam Adams to stand in the 
Rotunda at Washington ? Sentiment ! This is the strongest 
element in the strongest character. A package was found 
among the papers of Dean Swift — that old, fierce hater, his soul 
full of gall, who faced England in her maddest hour and de- 
feated her with his pen charged with lightning hotter than 
Junius's. Wrapped up among his choicest treasures was found 
a lock of hair. " Only a woman's hair," was the motto. Deep 
down in that heart full of strength and fury, there lay this foun- 
tain of sentiment, calming and shaping all that character. Nel- 
son on the broad sea, a thousand miles off, signalled, " England 
expects every man to do his duty." What was that? Senti- 
ment. It made a hero of every sailor. Yes, it made every sailor 
a Nelson. Caesar, crossing the Alps, drew his whole army aside 
to spare a tree. 

We circumnavigate the globe to find men to teach us. We 
tempt Agassiz from his birthplace to question nature for her 
secrets. Save the teachers God has put in our streets — teachers 
of law, order, justice, freedom, brotherhood, self-sacrifice, the 
nobleness of that life which serves men, and the happiness of 
his death who leaves the world better for his having lived. 



526 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Genius can mould no marble so speaking as the spot where a 
brave man stood or the scene where he labored. 



Some men say the Old South Church is ugly. I should be 
ashamed to know whether it is ugly or handsome. Does a man 
love his mother because she is handsome ? Could any man say 
whether his mother was ugly ? Must we remodel Sam Adams 
on a Chesterfield pattern ? Would you scuttle the Mayflower if 
you found her Dutch in build ? 



Knowledge does not fortify a man against crime. It does not 
create character. You can educate the brain so as to make it 
despise violence — only to fall more in love with cheating. What 
is called civilization drives away the tiger, but breeds the fox. 



A certain man spent all his money on a house. Some one 
asked him to contribute to build an insane asylum. " Gracious !" 
cried he, " I have built one already." 



I lectured one night in a New England town on " The Lost 
Arts." When I finished a lady said : 

" I was interested in the lecture, but it didn't seem to have 
much relation to the origin of law." 

" What do you mean, madam ?" I asked. 

" Why," said she, " weren't you to lecture on ' The Law 
Starts ' ?" 

Here are four lines from an old song which workingmen ought 
to commit to memory and ponder : 

" My lord rides out at the castle gate, 
My lady is grand in bower and hall. 
With men and maidens to cringe and wait : 
But John 0* the smithy pays for all. ' ' 



A politician is a man who lives by whispering at Washington 
what he wouldn't for all the world have known at home, and 
whispering at home what he wouldn't for all the world have 
known in Washington, and who is politically dead the moment 
he is equally well known in both places. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 527 

I once spent the night with a clergyman, an old friend, who 
had the habit of reading his sermons. I asked him why he did 
so. He went on to give me the reasons, and became animated. 
*'Well," said I, "I am tired to-night, but I have been very 
much interested in what you said. Nevertheless, if you had 
read yoMx remarks I should have gone to sleep." 



Would any young enthusiast on fire for a new reform be crazy 
enough to go to State Street, Beacon Street, or Harvard College 
for countenance ? If so, he must be very young, and will soon 
learn better. 

I passed the other day one of our city churches which has on 
it authentic likenesses of the apostles not in it. 



Luther, Calvin, Wesley, show that no man can be faithful to 
the truth in his pulpit or on the platform and be popular in his 
own generation. 

The English Constitution comes down to us through the ages 
not by the steps of logical deduction, but by transmigration, like 
that of Eastern mythology, through martyrs and patriots. 



Some people's idea of agitation is like the clown in the classic 
play, two thousand years ago, who seeing a man bring down 
with an arrow an eagle floating in the blue ether above, said : 
" You needn't have wasted that arrow — the fall would have 
killed him !" 

Keep your prejudices in favor of justice and liberty. " Get rid 
of this prejudice," said David Hume to his Christian mother. 
" My son," was 'her reply, '* can you show me anything better V 



When I was asked, the other day, how it happened there was 
so much learning at Cambridge, I answered : " Because nobody 
carries any away." 

A number of years ago a poor man, whose case, for some 
reason or for no reason skilfully presented, had excited a good 
deal of sympathy among Boston philanthropists, conceived the 



528 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

idea of having an entertainment given for his benefit, and pre- 
vailed upon the Rev. William R. Alger and myself to give him 
what would be known in theatrical circles as a benefit. The 
affair was very well advertised, men being even employed to 
carry placards about town, a means of advertising more novel 
then than now, and it was expected that Music Hall, the place 
chosen for the exercises, would be crowded. But from some 
cause or other, the weather, rival attractions, or what not, the 
patronage was so light that the amount received for the tickets 
was not sufficient to pay the expenses. On the day following 
the lecture I received a call from the beneficiary, who informed 
me that the expenses were $20 more than the receipts, and, just 
as I opened my lips to express regrets, the visitor added coolly : 
" I suppose that, of course, you and Mr. Alger will be responsi- 
ble for the balance." 

Opinion is not truth, but only truth filtered through the stand- 
point, the disposition, or the mood of the spectator. 



In the old Anti-Slavery days I lectured in Cincinnati. At the 
same time there was a convention of ministers in session. The 
next morning I took the cars, seating myself quite near the door. 
The car was full of white cravats, so that it looked like an ad- 
journed session of the convention. Presently, a sleek, well-fed 
man bustled on to the platform, and addressing the brakeman, 
asked : 

" Is Mr. Phillips on board .?" 

** Yes," was the reply " there he sits back of the door." 

The man came into the car — he was evidently a clergyman 
In a loud voice he cried, pointing his finger at me : 

" Are you Mr. Phillips ?" 

" I am, sir." 

*' Are you trying to free the niggers ?" 

" Yes, sir, I am an Abolitionist." 

" Well, why do you preach your doctrines up here ? Why 
don't you go there ?" pointing toward Kentucky, just across the 
Ohio River. 

" Excuse me," said I, " are you a preacher ?" 

"I am, sir." 

" Are you trying to save souls from hell ?" 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 529 

" Yes, sir, that is my business." 

' * Well, w hy don ' t you go there ? ' ' 

There was a roar, and my critic vanished in the next car. 



Men marvel at the uprising which hurled slavery to the dust. 
It was young men who dreamed dreams over patriot graves — 
enthusiasts wrapped in memories ! Marble, gold, and granite 
are not real : the only reality is an idea. 



My advice to workingmen is this : 

If you want power in this country ; if you want to make your- 
selves felt ; if you do not want your children to wait long years 
before they have the bread on the table they ought to have, the 
leisure in their lives they ought to have, the opportunities in life 
they ought to have ; if you don't want to wait yourselves, — write 
on your banner, so that every political trimmer can read it, so 
that every politician, no matter how short-sighted he may be can 
read it, " We never forget ! If you launch the arrow of sarcasm 
at labor, we never forget ; if there is a division in Congress, and 
you throw your vote in the wrong scale, we never forget ! You 
may go down on your knees, and say, ' I am sorry I did the 
act ;' and we will say, ' It will avail you in heaven, but on this 
side of the grave, never.' " So that a man, in taking up the 
labor question, will know he is dealing with a hair-trigger pistol, 
and will say, " I ani to be true to justice and to man : otherwise 
I am a dead duck." 

Hung Fung was a Chinese philosopher well-nigh a hundred 
years old. The Emperor once said to him : 

" Hung, ninety years of study and observation must have made 
yoa wise. Tell me, what is the great danger of a government .''" 

'* Well," quoth Hung, " it's the rat in the statue." 

*' The rat in the statue !" repeated the Emperor. *' What do 
you mean ?" 

" Why," retorted Hung, " you know we build statues to the 
memory of our ancestors. They are made of wood, and are 
hollow and painted. Now, if a rat gets into one you can't smoke 
it out — it's the image of your father. You can't plunge it into 
the water — that would wash off the paint. So the rat is safe 
because the image is sacred," 



530 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

May 23, 1879. 

My dear Friend : I read your remarks on cremation with 
hearty interest. They were very happily put, and struck me as 
fresh and original to a remarkable degree, for when every one 
is talking it is hard to put the topic in a new light. 

It is years since I've read Sir Thomas Browne's " Urn Burial," 
but I fancy there might be some flowers culled thence for use in 
this new discussion. Did you quote him ? 

Thank you for a sight of your utterances. Make my kindest 

compliments to your wife, to whom I send the best and latest 

photograph of Sumner, as a sly means of getting mine in along 

with and under cover of it. 

Yours cordially, 

Wendell Phillips.' 
Rev. Carlos Martyn. 



* See opposite page for fac-simile of Mr. Phillips's penmanship. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 



531 










APPENDIX. 



THE LOST ARTS.' 



Ladies and Gentlemen : 

I am to talk to you to-night about '* The Lost Arts/*- a lec- 
ture which has grown under my hand year after year, and which 
belongs to that first phase of the lyceum system, before it under- 
took to meddle with political duties or dangerous and angry 
questions of ethics ; when it was merely an academic institu- 
tion, trying to win busy men back to books, teaching a little 
science, or repeating some tale of foreign travel, or painting 
some great representative character, the symbol of his age. I 
think I can claim a purpose beyond a moment's amusement in 
this glance at early civilization. 

I, perhaps, might venture to claim that it was a medicine for 
what is the most objectionable feature of our national char- 
acter ; and that is self-conceit, — an undue appreciation of our- 
selves, an exaggerated estimate of our achievements, of our 
inventions, of our contributions to popular comfort, and of our 
place, in fact, in the great procession of the ages. We seem to 
imagine, that whether knowledge will die with us, or not, it cer- 
tainly began with us. We have a pitying estimate, a tender 
compassion, for the narrowness, ignorance, and darkness of the 
bygone ages. We seem to ourselves not only to monopolize, 
but to have begun, the era of light. In other words, we are all 
runiiing over with a fourth-day-of-July spirit of self-content. I 
am often reminded of the German whom the English poet Cole- 



^ This lecture was never revised by Mr. Phillips, and is imperfect 
in form and expression. But it is the best report in existence. 



534 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

ridge met at Frankfort. He always took off his hat with pro- 
found respect when he ventured to speak of himself. It seems 
to me, the American people might be painted in the chronic 
attitude of taking oft its hat to itself ; and therefore it can be no 
waste of time, with an audience in such a mood, to take their 
eyes for a moment from the present civilization, and guide them 
back to that earliest possible era that history describes for us, 
if it were only for the purpose of asking whether we boast on 
the right line. I might despair of curing the habit of boasting, 
but I might direct it better ! 

Well, I have been somewhat criticised, year after year, for 
this endeavor to open up the claims of old times. 1 have been 
charged with repeating useless fables with no foundation. Take 
the subject of glass. This material, Pliny says, was discovered 
by accident. Some sailors, landing on the eastern coast of 
Spain, took their cooking utensils, and supported them on the 
sand by the stones that they found in the neighborhood : they 
kindled their tire, cooked the fish, finished the meal, and re- 
moved the apparatus ; and glass was found to have resulted 
from the nitre and sea-sand, vitrified by the heat. Well, I have 
been a dozen times criticised by a number of wise men, in news- 
papers, who have said that this was a very idle tale, that there 
never was sufificient heat in a few bundles of sticks to produce 
vitrification, — glass-making. I happened, two years ago, to 
meet, on the prairies of Missouri, Professor Shepherd, oi Yale 
College. I mentioned this criticism to him. " Well," said he, 
" a little practical life would have freed men from that doubt." 
He went on : " We stopped last year in Mexico, to cook some 
venison. We got down from our saddles, and put the cooking 
apparatus on stones we found there ; made our fire with the 
wood we got there, resembling ebony ; and when we removed 
the apparatus there was pure silver gotten out of the embers by 
the intense heat of that almost iron wood. Now," said he, 
'* that heat was greater than any necessary to vitrify the mate- 
rials of glass. " Why not suppose that Pliny's sailors had lighted 
on some exceedingly hard wood ? May it not be as possible as 
in this case ? 

So, ladies and gentlemen, with a growing habit of distrust of 
a large share of this modern and exceedingly scientific criticism 
of ancient records, I think we have been betraying our own 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 535 

ignorance, and that frequently, when the statement does not 
look, on the face of it, to be exactly accurate, a little investiga- 
tion below the surface will show that it rests on a real truth. 
Take, for instance, the English proverb, which was often quoted 
in my college days. We used to think how little logic the com- 
mon people had ; and when we wanted to illustrate this in the 
school-room, — it was what was called a non sequitur : the 
effect did not come from the cause named, — we always quoted 
the English proverb, '* Tenterden steeple is the cause of Good- 
win Sands." We said, " How ignorant a population !" But, 
when we went deeper into the history, we found that the proverb 
was not meant for logic, but was meant for sarcasm. One of 
the bishops had fifty thousand pounds given to him, to build a 
breakwater to save the Goodwin Sands from the advancing sea ; 
but the good bishop, instead of building the breakwater to keep 
out the sea, simply built a steeple ; and this proverb was sar- 
castic, and not logical, that " Tenterden steeple was the cause 
of the Goodwin Sands." When you contemplate the motive, 
there was the closest and best-welded logic in the proverb. So 
I think a large share of our criticism of old legends and old 
statements will be found in the end to be the ignorance that 
overleaps its own saddle, and falls on the other side. 

Before I proceed to talk of these lost arts, I ought in fairness to 
make an exception. Over a very large section of literature, 
there is a singular contradiction to this swelling conceit. There 
are certain lines in which the moderns are ill satisfied with them- 
selves, and contented to acknowledge that they ought fairly to 
sit down at the feet of their predecessors. Take poetry, paint- 
ing, sculpture, architecture, the drama, and almost everything 
in works of any form that relates to beauty, — with regard to that 
whole sweep, the modern world gilds it with its admiration. 
Take the very phrases that we use. The artist says he wishes 
to go to Rome. "For what?" "To study the masters." 
Well, all the masters have been in their graves several hundred 
years. We are all pupils. You tell the poet, " Sir, that line of 
yours would remind one of Homer," and he is delighted. Stand 
in front of a painting, in the hearing of the artist, and compare 
its coloring to that of Titian or Raphael, and he remembers you 
forever. I recollect once standing in front of a bit of marble 
carved by Powers^ a Vermonter, who had a matchless, instinc- 



536 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

tive love of art, and perception of beauty. I said to an Italian 
standing- with me, *' Well, now, that seems to me to be perfec- 
tion." The answer was, "To be perfection," — shrugging his 
shoulders, — '* why, sir, that reminds you of Phidias !" as if to 
remind you of that Greek was a greater compliment than to be 
perfection. 

Well, now, the very choice of phrases betrays a confession of 
inferiority ; and you see it again crops out in the amount we 
borrow. Take the whole range of imaginative literature, and 
we are all wholesale borrowers. In every matter that relates to 
invention, to use, or beauty, or form, we are borrowers. 

You may glance around the furniture of the palaces in Europe, 
and you may gather all these utensils of art or use ; and, when 
you have fixed the shape and forms in your mind, I will take 
you into the museum of Naples, which holds the remains of the 
domestic life of the Romans, and you shall not find a single one 
of these modern forms of art or beauty or use, that was not 
anticipated there. We have hardly added one single line of 
beauty to the antique. 

Take the stories of Shakespeare, who has, perhaps, written 
his forty-odd plays. Some are historical. The rest, two thirds 
of them, he did not stop to invent, but he found them. These 
he clutched, ready made to his hand, from the Italian novelists, 
who had taken them before from the East. Cinderella and her 
slipper is older than all history, like half a dozen other baby 
legends. The annals of the world do not go back far enough to 
tell us their origin. 

All the boys' plays, like everything that amuses the child in 
the open air, are Asiatic. Rawlinson will show you that they 
came somewhere from the banks of the Ganges or the suburbs 
of Damascus. Bulwer borrowed the incidents of his Roman 
stories from legends of a thousand years before. Indeed, Dun- 
lop, who has grouped the history of the novels of all Europe 
into one essay, says that in the nations of modern Europe there 
have been two hundred and fifty or three hundred distinct 
stories. He says at least tVvO hundred of these may be traced, 
before Christianity, to the other side of the Black Sea. If this 
were my topic, I might tell you that even our newspaper-jokes 
are enjoying a very respt.'ctable old age. Take Maria Edge- 
worth's essay on Irish bulls and the laughable mistakes of the 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 537 

Irish. The tale which either Maria Edgeworth or her father 
thought the best is that famous story of a man writing a letter 
as follows : ** My dear friend, I would write you in detail, more 
minutely, if there was not an impudent fellow looking over my 
shoulder, reading every word." (" No, you lie : I've not read 
a word you have written !") This is an Irish bull, still it is a 
very old one. It is only two hundred and fifty years older than 
the New Testament. Horace Walpole dissented from Richard 
Lovell Edgeworth, and thought the other Irish bull was the best, 
— of the man who said, " I would have been a very handsome 
man, but they changed me in the cradle." That comes from 
Don Quixote, and is Spanish ; but Cervantes borrowed it from 
the Greek in the fourth century, and the Greek stole it from the 
Egyptian hundreds of years back. 

There is one story which it is said Washington has related, of 
a man who went into an inn, and asked for a glass of drink 
from the landlord, who pushed forward a wineglass about half 
the usual size (the teacups also in that day were not more than 
half the present size). The landlord said, " That glass out of 
which you are drinking is forty years old." — " Well," said the 
thirsty traveller, contemplating its diminutive proportions, *' I 
think it is the smallest thing of its age I ever saw." That story 
as told is given as a story of Athens three hundred and seventy- 
five years before Christ was born. Why ! all these Irish bulls 
are Greek,— every one of them. Take the Irishman who carried 
around a brick as a specimen of the house he had to sell ; take 
the Irishman who shut his eyes, and looked into the glass to see 
how he would look when he was dead ; take the Irishman that 
bought a crow, alleging that crows were reported to live two 
hundred years, and he meant to set out and try it ; take the 
Irishman who met a friend who said to him, '* Why, sir, I heard 
you were dead."—" Well," says the man, " I suppose you see 
Tm not." — " Oh, no !" says he, " I would believe the man who 
told nie a good deal quicker than I would you." Well, those 
are all Greek. A score or more of them, of the parallel char- 
acter, come from Athens. 

Our old Boston patriots felt that tarring and feathering a 
Tory was a genuine patent Yankee firebrand, — Yankeeism. 
They little imagined that when Richard Cceur de Lion set out 
on one of his crusades, among the orders he issued to his camp 



538 WENDELL Phillips. 

of soldiers was, that any one who robbed a hen-roost should be 
tarred and feathered. Many a man who lived in Connecticut 
has repeated the story of taking children to the limits of the 
town, and giving them a sound thrashing to enforce their memory 
of the spot. But the Burgundians in France, in a statute now 
eleven hundred years old, attributed valor to the East of France 
because it had a law that the children should be taken to the 
limits of the district, and there soundly whipped, in order that 
they might forever remember the boundary-line. 

So we have very few new things in that line. But I said I 
would take the subject of glass. It is the very best expression 
of man's self-conceit. 

I had heard that nothing had been observed in ancient times 
which could be called by the name of glass, — that there had 
been merely attempts to imitate it. I thought they had proved 
the proposition : they certainly had elaborated it. In Pompeii, 
a dozen miles south of Naples, which was covered with ashes by 
Vesuvius eighteen hundred years ago, they broke into a room 
full of glass : there was ground glass, window-glass, cut-glass, 
and colored glass of every variety. It was undoubtedly a glass- 
maker's factory. So the lie and the refutation came face to 
face. It was like a pamphlet printed in London, in 1836, by Dr. 
Lardner, which proved that a steamboat could not cross the 
ocean ; and the book came to this country in the first steamboat 
that came across the Atlantic. 

The chemistry of the most ancient period had reached a point 
which we have never even approached, and which we in vain 
struggle to reach to-day. Indeed, the whole management of 
the effect of light on glass is still a matter of profound study. 
The first two stories v/hich I have to offer you are simply stories 
from history. 

The first is from the letters of the Catholic priests who broke 
into China, which were published in France some two hundred 
years ago. They were shown a glass, transparent and color- 
less, which was filled with a liquor made by the Chinese, that 
was shown to the observers, and appeared to be colorless like 
water. This liquor was poured into the glass, and then, look- 
ing through it, it seemed to be filled with fishes. They turned 
this out, and repeated the experiment, and again it was filled 
with fishes. The Chinese confessed that they did not make 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 539 

them ; that they were the plunder of some foreign conquest. 
This is not a singular thing in Chinese history ; for in some of 
their scientific discoveries we have found evidence that they did 
not make them, but stole them. 

The second story, of half a dozen, relates to the age of 
Tiberius, the time of St. Paul ; and tells of a Roman who had 
been banished, and who returned to Rome, bringing a wonder- 
ful cup. This cup he dashed upon the marble pavement, and 
it was crushed, not broken, by the fall. It was dented some, 
and with a hammer he easily brought it into shape again. 
It was brilliant, transparent, but not brittle. I once made 
this statement in New Haven ; and among the audience 
was Professor Silliman. He was kind enough to come to 
the platform when I had ended, and say that he was familiar 
with most of my facts, but, speaking of malleable glass, he 
had this to say, — that it was nearly a natural impossibility, 
and that no amount of evidence which could be brought would 
make him credit it. We'l, the Romans got their chemistry from 
the Arabians ; they brought it into Spain eight centuries ago, 
and in their books of that age they claim that they got from the 
Arabians malleable glass. There is a kind of glass spoken of 
there, that, if supported by one end, by its own weight in twenty 
hours would dwindle down to a fine line, and that you could 
curve around your wrist. Von Beust, the Chancellor of Austria, 
has ordered secrecy in Hungary in regard to a recently dis- 
covered process by which glass can be used exactly like wool, 
and manufactured into cloth. 

These are a few records. When you go to Rome, they will 
show you a bit of glass like the solid rim of this tumbler, — trans- 
parent glass, a solid thing, which they lift up so as to show you 
that there is nothing concealed ; but in the centre of the glass 
is a drop of colored glass, perhaps as large as a pea. mott'ed 
like a duck, finely mottled, with the shifting colored hues of the 
neck, and which even a miniature pencil could not do more per- 
fectly. It is manifest that this drop of liquid glass must have 
been poured, because there is no joint. This must have been 
done by a greater heat than the annealing process, because that 
process shows breaks. 

The imitation of gems has deceived not only the lay people, 
but the connoisseurs. Some of these imitations in later years 



546 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

have been discovered. The celebrated vase of the Genoa Cathe* 
dral was considered a solid emerald. The Roman Catholic 
legend of it was, that it was one of the treasures that the Queen 
of Sheba gave to Solomon, and that it was the identical cup out 
of which the Saviour drank at the Last Supper. Columbus 
must have admired it. It was venerable in his day ; it was 
death for anybody to touch it but a Catholic priest. And when 
Napoleon besieged Genoa, the Jews offered to loan the Senate 
three million dollars on that single article as security. Napo- 
leon took it, and carried it to France, and gave it to the Insti- 
tute. Somewhat reluctantly the scholars said, "It is not a 
stone : we hardly know what it is." 

Cicero said that he had seen the entire " Iliad," which is a poem 
as large as the New Testament, written on a skin so thin that it 
could be rolled up in the compass of a nut-shell. Now, this is 
imperceptible to the ordinary eye. You have seen the Declara- 
tion of Independence in the compass of a quarter of a dollar, 
written with glasses. I have to-day a paper at home, as long as 
half my hand, on which was photographed the whole contents of 
a London newspaper. It was put under a dove's wing, and sent 
into Paris, where they enlarged it, and read the news. This 
copy of the ' ' Iliad' ' must have been made by some such process. 

In the Roman theatre, — the Coliseum, which could seat a 
hundred thousand people, — the emperor's box, raised to the 
highest tier, bore about the same proportion to the space as 
this stand does to this hall ; and to look down to the centre of a 
six-acre lot, was to look a considerable distance. (" Consider- 
able," by the way, is not a Yankee word. Lord Chesterfield 
uses it in his letters to his son, so it has a good English origin.) 
Pliny says that Nero the tyrant had a ring with a gem in it, 
which he looked through, and watched the sword-play of the 
gladiators, — men who killed each other to amuse the people, — 
more clearly than with the naked eye. So Nero had an opera- 
glass. 

Mauritius the Sicilian stood on the promontory of his island, 
and could sweep over the entire sea to the coast of Africa with 
his nauscopite, which is a word derived from two Greek words, 
meaning " to see a ship." Evidently Mauritius, who was a 
pirate, had a marine telescope. 

You may visit Dr. Abbot's museum, where you will see the 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 54I 

ring of Cheops. Bunsen puts him five hundred years before 
Christ. The signet of the ring is about the size of a quarter of 
a dollar, and the engraving is invisible without the aid of glasses. 
No man was ever shown into the cabinets of gems in Italy with- 
out being furnished with a microscope to look at them. It 
would be idle for him to look at them without one. He couldn't 
appreciate the delicate lines and the expression of the faces. If 
you go to Parma, they will show you a gem once worn on the 
finger of Michael Angelo, of which the engraving is two thou- 
sand years old, on which there are the figures of seven women. 
You must have the aid of a glass in order to distinguish the 
forms at all. I have a friend who has a ring, perhaps three- 
quarters of an inch in diameter, and on it is the naked figure of 
the god Hercules. By the aid of glasses you can distinguish 
the interlacing muscles, and count every separate hair on the 
eyebrows. Layard says he would be unable to read the en- 
gravings at Nineveh without strong spectacles, they are so ex- 
tremely small. Rawlinson brought home a stone about twenty 
inches long and ten wide, containing an entire treatise on mathe- 
matics. It would be perfectly illegible without glasses. Now, 
if we are unable to read it without the aid of glasses, you may 
suppose the man who engraved it had pretty strong spectacles. 
So the microscope, instead of dating from our time, finds its 
brothers in the books of Moses, — and these are infant brothers. 
So if you take colors. Color is, we say, an embellishment. 
We dye our dresses, and ornament our furniture. It is a luxury 
to gratify the eye. But the Egyptians impressed it into a new 
service. For them, it was a method of recording history. 
Some parts of their history were written ; but when they wanted 
to elaborate history they painted it. Their colors are immortal, 
else we could not know of it. We find upon the stucco of their 
walls their kings holding court, their armies marching out, their 
craftsmen in the ship-yard, with the ships floating in the dock ; 
and, in fact, we trace all their rites and customs painted in 
undying colors. The French who went to Egypt with Napoleon 
said that all the colors were perfect except the greenish-white, 
which is the hardest for us. They had no difficulty with the 
Tyrian purple. The buried city of Pompeii was a city of 
stucco. All the houses are stucco outside, and it is stained 
with Tyrian purple, — the royal color of antiquity. 



542 WENDELl. PHILLIPS. 

But you cannot rely on the name of a color after a thousand 
years. So the Tyrian purple is almost a red, — about the color 
of these curtains. This is a city of all red. It had been buried 
seventeen hundred years ; and if you take a shovel now, and 
clear away the ashes, this color flames up upon you, a great 
deal richer than anything we can produce. You can go down 
into the narrow vault which Nero built as a retreat from the 
great heat, and you will find the walls painted all over with fanci- 
ful designs in arabesque, which have been buried beneath the 
earth fifteen hundred years ; but when the peasants light it up 
with their torches, the colors flash out before you as fresh as 
they were in the days of St. Paul. Our fellow-citizen Mr. Page 
spent twelve years in Venice, studying Titian's method of mix- 
ing his colors, and he thinks he has got it. Yet come down 
from Titian, whose colors are wonderfully and perfectly fresh, 
to Sir Joshua Reynolds, and although his colors are not yet a 
hundred years old, they are fading : the colors on his lips are 
dying out, and the cheeks are losing their tints. He did not 
know how to mix well. All this mastery of color is as yet un- 
equalled. If you should go with that most delightful of all lec- 
turers. Professor Tyndall, he would show you in the spectrum 
the vanishing rays of violet, and prove to you that beyond their 
limit there are rays still more delicate, and to you invisible, but 
which he, by chemical paper, will make visible ; and he will tell 
you that probably, though you see three or four inches more 
than three hundred years ago your predecessors did, yet three 
hundred years after our successors will surpass our limit. The 
French have a theory that there is a certain delicate shade of 
blue that Europeans cannot see. In one of his lectures to his 
students, Ruskin opened his Catholic mass-book, and said, 
" Gentlemen, we are the best chemists in the world. No Eng- 
lishman ever could doubt that. But we cannot make such a 
scarlet as that ; and even if we could, it would not last for 
twenty years. Yet this is five hundred years old !" The 
Frenchman says, " I am the best dyer in Europe : nobody can 
equal me, and nobody can surpass Lyons." Yet in Cashmere, 
where the girls make shawls worth thirty thousand dollars, they 
will show him three hundred distinct colors, which he not only 
cannot make, but cannot even distinguish. When I was in 
Rome, if a lady wished to wear a half dozen colors at a mas- 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 543 

querade, and have them all in harmony, she would go to the 
jews ; for the Oriental eye is better than even those of France 
or Italy, of which we think so highly. 

Taking the metals. The Bible in its first chapters shows that 
man first conquered metals there in Asia ; and on that spot 
to-day he can work more wonders with those metals than we 
can. 

One of the surprises that the European artists received, when 
the English plundered the summer palace of the King of China, 
was the curiously wrought metal vessels of every kind, far ex- 
ceeding all the boasted skill of the workmen of Europe. 

Mr. Colton of the Boston Journal, the first week he landed in 
Asia, found that his chronometer was out of order, from the 
steel of the works having become rusted. The London Medical 
and Surgical Journal advises surgeons not to venture to carry 
any lancets to Calcutta, — to have them gilded, because English 
steel could not bear the atmosphere of India. Yet the Damas- 
cus blades of the Crusades were not gilded, and they are as per- 
fect as they were eight centuries ago. There was one at the 
London Exhibition, the point of which could be made to touch 
the hilt, and which could be put into a scabbard like a cork- 
screw, and bent every way without breaking, like an American 
politician. Now, the wonder of this is, that perfect steel is a 
marvel of science. If a London chronometer-maker wants the 
best steel to use in his chronometer, he does not send to Shef- 
field, the centre of all science, but to the Punjaub, the empire of 
the seven rivers, where there is no science at all. The first 
needle ever made in England was made in the time of Henry 
the Eighth, and made by a negro ; and when he died, the art 
died with him. Some of the first travellers in Africa stated 
that they found a tribe in the interior who gave them better 
razors than they had ; the irrepressible negro coming up in 
science as in politics. The best steel is the greatest triumph of 
metallurgy, and metallurgy is the glory of chemistry. 

The poets have celebrated the perfection of the Oriental steel ; 
and it is recognized as the finest by Moore, Byron, Scott, 
Southey, and many others. I have even heard a young advocate 
of the lost arts find an argument in Byron's "Sennacherib," 
from the fact that the mail of the warriors in that one short 
night had rusted before the trembling Jews stole out in the 



544 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

morning to behold the terrible work of the Lord. Scott, in his 
" Tales of the Crusaders," — for Sir Walter was curious in his 
love oi the lost arts, — describes a meeting between Richard 
Coeur de Lion and Saladin. Saladin asks Richard to show him 
the wonderful strength for which he is famous, and the Norman 
monarch responds by severing a bar of iron which lies on the 
floor of his tent. Saladin say, " I cannot do that ;" but he 
takes an eider-down pillow from the sofa, and, drawing his keen 
blade across it, it falls in two pieces. Richard says, " This is 
the black art ; it is magic ; it is the devil : you cannot cut that 
which has no resistance ;" and Saladin, to show him that such 
is not the case, takes a scarf from his shoulders, which is so 
light that it almost floats in the air, and, tossing it up, severs it 
before it can descend. George Thompson told me he saw a 
man in Calcutta throw a handful of floss-silk into the air, and a 
Hindoo sever it into pieces with his sabre. We can produce 
nothing like this. 

Considering their employment of the mechanical forces, and 
their movement of large masses from the earth, we know that 
the Egyptians had the five, seven, or three mechanical powers ; 
but we cannot account for the multiplication and increase neces- 
sary to perform the wonders they accomplished. 

In Boston, lately, we have moved the Pelham Hotel, weigh- 
ing fifty thousand tons, fourteen feet, and are very proud of it ; 
and since then we have moved a whole block of houses twenty- 
three feet, and I have no doubt we will write a book about it : 
but there is a book telling how Domenico Fontana of the six- 
teenth century set up the Egyptian obelisk at Rome on end, in 
the Papacy of Sixtus V. Wonderful ! Yet the Egyptians quar- 
ried that stone, and carried it a hundred and fifty miles, and the 
Romans brought it seven hundred and fifty miles, and never 
said a word about it. Mr. Batterson of Hartford, walking with 
Brunei, the architect of the Thames tunnel, in Egypt, asked 
him what he thought of the mechanical power of the Egyptians ; 
and he said, " There is Pompey's Pillar : it is an hundred feet 
high, and the capital weighs two thousand pounds. It is some- 
thing of a feat to hang two thousand pounds at that height in 
the air, and the few men that can do it would better discuss 
Egyptian mechanics," 

Take canals. The Suez canal absorbs half its receipts in clean- 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 545 

ing out the sand which fills it continually, and it is not yet known 
whether it is a pecuniary success. The ancients built a canal 
at right angles to ours ; because they knew it would not fill up 
if built in that direction, and they knew such an one as ours 
would. There were magnificent canals in the land of the Jews, 
with perfectly arranged gates and sluices. We have only just 
begun to understand ventilation properly for our houses ; yet 
late experiments at the Pyramids in Egypt show that those 
Egyptian tombs were ventilated in the most perfect and scien- 
tific manner. 

Again, cement is modern, for the ancients dressed and joined 
their stones so closely, that, in buildings thousands of years old, 
the thin blade of a penknife cannot be forced between them. 
The railroad dates back to Egypt. Arago has claimed that they 
had a knowledge of steam. A painting has been discovered of 
a ship full of machinery, and a French engineer said that the 
arrangement of this machinery could only be accounted for by 
supposing the motive power to have been steam. Bramah 
acknowledges that he took the idea of his celebrated lock from 
an ancient Egyptian pattern. De Tocqueville says there was 
no social question that was not discussed to rags in Egypt. 

" Well," say you, " Franklin invented the lightning-rod." 
I have no doubt he did ; but years before his invention, and 
before muskets were invented, the old soldiers on guard on the 
towers used Franklin's invention to keep guard with ; and if a 
spark passed between them and the spear-head, they ran and 
bore the warning of the state and condition of affairs. After 
that you will admit that Benjamin Franklin was n.^t the only 
one that knew of the presence of electricity, and the advantages 
derived from its use. Solomon's Temple, you will find, was 
situated on an exposed point of the hill : the temple was so lofty 
that it was often in peril, and was guarded by a system exactly 
like that of Benjamin Franklin. 

Well, I may tell you a little of ancient manufactures. The 
Duchess of Burgundy took a necklace from the neck of a 
mummy, and wore it to a ball given at the Tuileries ; and 
everybody said they thought it was the newest thing there. A 
Hindoo princess came into court ; and her father, seeing her, 
said, ** Go home, you are not decently covered, — go home ;" 
and she said, *' Father, 1 have seven suits on ;" but the suits 



546 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

were of muslin, so thin that the king could see through them. 
A Roman poet says, " The girl was in the poetic dress of the 
country." I fancy the French would be rather astonished at 
this. Four hundred and fifty years ago the first spinning 
machine was introduced into Europe. I have evidence to show 
that it made its appearance two thousand years before. 

Why have I groped among these ashes ? I have told you 
these facts to show you tliat we have not invented everything — 
that we do not monopolize the encyclopasdia. The past had 
knowledge. But it was the knowledge of the classes, not of the 
masses. " The beauty that was Greece and the grandeur that 
was Rome" were exclusive, the possession of the few. The 
science of Egypt was amazing : but it meant privilege — the 
privilege of the king and the priest. It separated royalty and 
priesthood from the people, and was the engine of oppression. 
When Cambyses came down from Persia and thundered across 
Egypt treading out royalty and priesthood, he trampled out at 
the same time civilization itself. 

Four thousand years passed before the people came into ex- 
istence. To-day learning no longer hides in the convent or 
slumbers in the palace. No ! she comes out into every-day life, 
joins hands with the multitude and cushions the peasant. Our 
astronomy looks at but does not dwell in the stars. It serves 
navigation and helps us run boundaries. Our chemistry is not 
the secret of the alchemist striving to change base metals into 
gold. It is Liebig v/ith his hands full of blessings for every 
farmer, and digging gold out of the earth with the miner's pick- 
axe. Of all we know I can show you ninety-nine items out of 
every hundred which the past anticipated and which the world 
forgot. Our distinction lies in the liberty of intellect and the 
diffusion of knowledge. 

When Gibbon finished his history of Rome, he said : " We 
have iron and fire : the hand can never go back on the dial of 
time." He made this boast as he stood, at night, amid the ruins 
of the Corsani palace, looking out on the churches where the 
monks were chanting. 

But what is to prevent history from repeating itself ? Why 
should our arts not be lost, — our temples of Jupiter not fall, — 
our Roine not decline "i Will our possession of iron and fire 
preserve them ? Before Rome was peopled nations rose and 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 547 

fell with iron in one hand and fire in the other. Any civilization 
that is exclusive, any arts that are secret and individual must 
perish. 

The distinctive glory of the nineteenth century is that it dis- 
tributes knowledge ; that it recognizes the divine will, which is 
that every man has a right to know whatever may be serviceable 
to himself or to his fellows ; that it makes the Church, the school- 
house, and the town hall its symbols, and humanity its care. 
This democratic spirit will animate our arts with immortality, 
if God means that they shall last. 



DANIEL O'CONNELL.' 



A HUNDRED years ago to-day Daniel O'Connell was born. 
The Irish race, wherever scattered over the globe, assembles 
to-night to pay fitting tribute to his memory, — one of the most 
eloquent men, one of the most devoted patriots, and the most 
successful statesman, which that race has given to history. 
We of other races may well join you in that tribute, since the 
cause of constitutional government owes more to O'Connell than 
to any other political leader of the last two centuries. The 
English-speaking race, to find his equal among its statesmen, 
must pass by Chatham and Walpole, and go back to Oliver 
Cromwell, or the able men who held up the throne of Queen 
Elizabeth. If to put the civil and social elements of your day 
into successful action, and plant the seeds of continued strength 
and progress for coming times, — if this is to be a statesman, 
then most emphatically was O'Connell one. To exert this con- 
trol, and secure this progress, while and because ample means 
lie ready for use under your hand, does not rob Walpole and 
Colbert, Chatham and Richelieu, of their title to be considered 
statesmen. To do it, as Martin Luther did, when one must 
ingeniously discover or invent his tools, and while the mightiest 
forces that influence human affairs are arrayed against him, 
that is what ranks O'Connell with the few masterly statesmen 
the English-speaking race has ever had. When Napoleon's 
soldiers bore the negro chief Toussaint L'Ouverture into exile, 
he said, pointing back to San Domingo, " You think you have 
rooted up the tree of liberty, but I am only a branch. I have 
planted the tree itself so deep that ages will never root it up." 
And whatever may be said of the social or industrial condition 



' Oration delivered at the O'Connell Celebration in Bo5ton, August 
6th, 1870, 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 549 

of Hayti during the last seventy years, its nationality has never 
been successfully assailed. 

O'Connell is the only Irishman who can say as much of Ire- 
land. From the peace of Utrecht, 1713, till the fall of Napoleon, 
Great Britain was the leading State in Europe ; while Ireland, 
a comparatively insignificant island, lay at its feet. She weighed 
next to nothing in the scale of British politics. The Continent 
pitied, and England despised her. O'Connell found her a mass 
of quarrelling races and sects, divided, dispirited, broken- 
hearted, and servile. He made her a natio7i, whose first word 
broke in pieces the iron obstinacy of Wellington, tossed Peel 
from the Cabinet, and gave the government to the Whigs : 
whose colossal figure, like the helmet in Walpole's romance, has 
filled the political sky ever since ; whose generous aid thrown 
into the scale of the three great British reforms, — the ballot, the 
corn laws, and slavery, — secured their success ; a nation whose 
continual discontent has dragged Great Britain down to be a 
second-rate power on the chess-board of Europe. I know other 
causes have helped in producing this result, but the nationality 
which O'Connell created has been the main cause of this change 
in England's importance. Dean Swift, Molyneux, and Henry 
Flood thrust Ireland for a moment into the arena of British 
politics, a sturdy suppliant clamoring for justice ; and Grattan 
held her there an equal, and, as he thought, a nation, for a few 
years. But the unscrupulous hand of William Pitt brushed 
away in an hour all Grattan's work. Well might he say of 
the Irish Parliament which he brought to life, " I sat by its 
cradle, I followed its hearse ;" since after that infamous union, 
which Byron called a " union of the shark with its prey," Ire- 
land sank back, plundered and helpless. O'Connell lifted her 
to a fixed and permanent place in English affairs, — no suppliant, 
but a conqueror dictating her terms. 

This is the proper standpoint from which to look at O'Con- 
nell's work. This is the consideration that ranks him, not with 
founders of states, like Alexander, Csesar, Bismarck, Napoleon, 
and William the Silent, but with men who, without arms, by 
force of reason, have revolutionized their times, — with Luther, 
Jefferson, Mazzini, Samuel Adams, Garrison, and Franklin. 1 
know some men will sneer at this claim, — those who have never 
looked at him except through the spectacles of English critics. 



550 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

who despised him as an Irishman and a Catholic, until they 
came to hate him as a conqueror. As Grattan said of Kirwan, 
" The curse of Swift was upon him, to have been born an Irish- 
man and a man of genius, and to have used his gifts for his 
country's good." Mark what measure of success attended the 
able men who preceded him, in circumstances as favorable as 
his, perhaps even better ; then measure him by comparison. 

An island soaked with the blood of countless rebellions, op- 
pression such as would turn cowards into heroes, a race whose 
disciplined valor had been proved on almost every battle-field in 
Europe, and whose reckless daring lifted it, any time, in arms 
against England, with hope or without — what inspired them ? 
Devotion, eloquence, and patriotism seldom paralleled in his- 
tory. Who led them ? Dean Szuzff, according to Addison 
" the greatest genius of his age," called by Pope " the incom- 
parable," a man fertile in resources, of stubborn courage, and 
tireless energy, master of an English style unequalled, perhaps, 
for its purpose then or since, a man who had twice faced Eng- 
land in her angriest mood, and by that masterly pen subdued 
her to his will ; Henry Flood, eloquent even for an Irishman, 
and sagacious as he was eloquent, the eclipse of that brilliant 
life one of the saddest pictures in Irish biography ; Grattan, 
with all the courage, and more than the eloquence, of his race, 
a statesman's eye quick to see every advantage, boundless de- 
votion, unspotted integrity, recognized as an equal by the world's 
leaders, and welcomed by Fox to the House of Commons as the 
" Demosthenes of Ireland ;" E?mnet in the field, Sheridan in 
the senate, Qirran at the bar ; and, above all, Edmund Burke, 
whose name makes eulogy superfluous, more than Cicero in the 
senate, almost Plato in the academy. All these gave their lives 
to Ireland ; and when the present century opened, where was 
she ? Sold like a slave in the market-place by her perjured 
master, William Pitt. It was then that O'Connell flung himself 
into the struggle, gave fifty years to the service of his country ; 
and where is she to-day? Not only redeemed, but her indepen- 
dence put beyond doubt or peril. Grattan and his predecessors 
could get no guarantees for what rights they gained. In that 
sagacious, watchful, and almost omnipotent public optnioft, 
which O'Connell created, is an all-sufficient guarantee of Ire- 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 5^1 

land's future. Look at her ! almost every shackle has fallen 
from her limbs : all that human wisdom has as yet devised to 
remedy the evils of bigotry and misrule has been done, O'Con- 
nell found Ireland a " hissing and a byword" in Edinburgh and 
London. He made her the pivot of British politics : she rules 
them, directly or indirectly, with as absolute a sway as the slave 
question did the United States from 1850 to 1865. Look into 
Earl Russell's book, and the history of the Reform Bill of 1832, 
and see with how much truth it may be claimed that O'Connell 
and his fellows gave Englishmen the ballot under that act. It 
is by no means certain that the corn laws could have been abol- 
ished without their aid. In the Anti-Slavery struggle O'Connell 
stands, in influence and ability, equal with the best. I know the 
credit all those measures do to English leaders ; but, in my 
opinion, the next generation will test the statesmanship of Peel, 
Palmerston, Russell, and Gladstone, almost entirely by their 
conduct of the Irish question. All the laurels they have hitherto 
won in that field are rooted in ideas which Grattan and O'Con- 
nell urged on reluctant hearers for half a century. Why do 
Bismarck and Alexander look with such contemptuous indiffer- 
ence on every attempt of England to mingle in European affairs 7 
Because they know they have but to lift a finger, and Ireland 
stabs her in the back. Where was the statesmanship of English 
leaders when they allowed such an evil to grow so formidable ? 
This is Ireland to-day. What was she when O'Connell under- 
took her cause ? The saddest of Irish poets has described her : 

" O Ireland ! my country, the hour of thy pride and thy splendor hath 

passed ; 
And the chain that was spurned in thy moments of power hangs heavy 

around thee at last. 
There are marks in the fate of each clime, there are turns in the for. 

tunes of men ; 
But the changes of realms, or the chances of time, shall never restore 

thee again. 

" Thou art chained to the wheel of the foe by links which a world can- 
not sever : 

With thy tyrant through storm and through calm thou shalt go, and 
thy sentence is bondage forever. 



552 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Thou art doomed for the thankless to toil, thou art left for the proud 

to disdain ; 
And the blood of thy sons and the wealth of thy soil shall be lavished 
and lavished in vain. 

" Thy riches with taunts shall be taken, thy valor with coldness be 

paid ; 
And of millions who see thee thus sunk and forsaken, not one shall 

stand forth in thine aid. 
In the nations thy place is left void ; thou art lost in the list of the 

free ; 
Even realms by the plague and the earthquake destroyed may revive, 

but no hope is for thee." 

It was a community impoverished by five centuries of oppres- 
sion, — four millions of Catholics robbed of every acre of their 
native land : it was an island torn by race-hatred and religious 
bigotry, her priests indifferent, and her nobles hopeless or 
traitors. The wiliest of her enemies, a Protestant Irishman, 
ruled the British senate ; the sternest of her tyrants, a Protes- 
tant Irishman, led the armies of Europe. Puritan hate, which 
had grown blinder and more bitter since the days of Cromwell, 
gave them weapons. Ireland herself lay bound in the iron links 
of a code which Montesquieu said could have been " made only 
by devils, and should be registered only in hell." Her millions 
were beyond the reach of the great reform engine of modern 
times, since they could neither read nor write. 

In this mass of ignorance, weakness, and quarrel, one keen 
eye saw hidden the elements of union and strength. With rarest 
skill he called them forth, and marshalled them into rank. 
Then this one man, without birth, wealth, or office, in a land 
ruled by birth, wealth, and office, moulded from those unsus- 
pected elements a power, which, overawing king, senate, and 
people, wrote his single will on the statute-book of the most 
obstinate nation in Europe, Safely to emancipate the Irish 
Catholics, and, in spite of Saxon, Protestant hate, to lift all Ire- 
land to the level of British citizenship. — this was the problem 
which statesmanship and patriotism had been seeking for two 
centuries to solve. For this, blood had been poured out like 
water. On this, the genius of Swift, the learning of Molyneux, 
and the eloquence of Bu?he, Grattan, and Burke, had been 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 553 

wasted. English leaders ever since Fox had studied this prob- 
lem anxiously. They saw that the safety of the empire was 
compromised. At one or two critical moments in the reign of 
George IIL, one signal from an Irish leader would have snapped 
the chain that bound Ireland to his throne. His ministers recog- 
nized it ; and they tried every expedient, exhausted every device, 
dared every peril, kept oaths or broke them, in order to suc- 
ceed. All failed ; and not only failed, but acknowledged they 
could see no way in which success could ever be achieved. 

O'Connell achieved it. Out of this darkness he called forth 
light. Out of this most abject, weak, and pitiable of kingdoms 
he made z. power j and, dying, he left in Parliament a spectre, 
which, unless appeased, pushes Whig and Tory ministers alike 
from their stools. 

But Brougham says he was a demagogue. Fie on Wellington, 
Derby, Peel, Palmerston, Liverpool, Russell, and Brougham, to 
be fooled and ruled by a demagogue ! What must they, the 
subjects, be, if O'Connell, their king, be only a bigot and a 
demagogue r A demagogue rides the storm : he has never 
really the ability to create one. He uses it narrowly, ignorantly, 
and for selfish ends. If not crushed by the force, which, with- 
out his will, has flung him into power, he leads it with ridicu- 
lous miscalculation against some insurmountable obstacle that 
scatters it forever. Dying, he leaves no mark on the elements 
with which he has been mixed. Robespierre will serve for an 
illustration. It took O'Connell thirty years of patient and saga- 
cious labor to mould elements whose existence no man, however 
wise, had ever discerned before. He used them unselfishly, 
only to break the yoke of his race. Nearly fifty years have 
passed since his triumph, but his impress still stands forth clear 
and sharp on the empire's policy. Ireland is wholly indebted 
to him for her political education. Responsibility educates : he 
lifted her to broader responsibilities. Her possession of power 
makes it the keen interest of other classes to see she is well in- 
formed. He associated her with all the reform movements of 
Great Britain. This is the education of affairs, broader, deeper, 
and more real than any school or college can give. This and 
power, his gifts, are the lever which lifts her to every other right 
and privilege. How much England owes him we can never 
know ; since how great a danger and curse Ireland would have 



554 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

been to the empire had she continued the cancer Pitt and Castle* 
reagh left her is a chapter of history which, fortunalely, can 
never be written. No demagogue ever walked through the 
streets of Dublin as O'Connell and Grattan did more than once, 
hooted and mobbed because they opposed themselves to the 
mad purpose of the people, and crushed it by a stern resistance. 
No demagogue would have offered himself to a race like the Irish 
as the apostle of peace, pledging himself to the British Govern- 
ment, that, in the long agitation before him, with brave millions 
behind him spoiling for a fight, he would never draw a sword. 

I have purposely dwelt long on this view, because the extent 
and the far-reaching effects of O'Connell's work, without regard 
to the motives which inspired him, or the methods he used, 
have never been fully recognized. 

Briefly stated, he did what the ablest and bravest of his fore- 
runners had tried to do, and failed. He created a public opin- 
ion and unity of purpose (no matter what be now the dispute 
about methods), which make Ireland a naiio?i j he gave her 
British citizenship, and a place in the imperial Parliament ; he 
gave her 2l press and 2. public : with these tools her destiny is 
in her own hands. When the Abolitionists got for the negro 
schools and the vote, they settled the slave question ; for they 
planted the sure seeds of civil equality. O'Connell did this for 
Ireland, — this which no Irishman before had ever dreamed of 
attempting. Swift and Molyneux were able. Grattan, Bushe, 
Saurin, Burrowes, Plunket, Curran, Burke, were eloquent. 
Throughout the island courage was a drug : they gained now 
one point, and now another ; but, after all, they left the helm 
of Ireland's destiny in foreign and hostile hands. O'Connell 
v^as brave, sagacious, eloquent : but, more than all, he was a 
statesman ; for he gave to Ireland's own keeping the key of her 
future. As Lord Bacon marches down the centuries, he may 
lay one hand on the telegraph, and the other on the steam- 
engine, and say, " These arc mine, for I taught you how to 
study nature." In a similar sense, as shackle after shackle falls 
from Irish limbs, O'Connell may say, " This victory is mine ; 
for I taught you the method, and I gave you the arms." 

I have hitherto been speaking of his ability and success : by 
and by we will look at his character, motives, and methods. 
This unique ability, even his enemies have been forced to con- 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 55$ 

fess. Harriet Martineau, in her incomparable history of the 
" Thirty Years' Peace," has, with Tory hate, misconstrued 
every action of O'Connell, and invented a bad motive for each 
one. But even she confesses that '* he rose in power, influence, 
and notoriety to an eminence such as no other individual citizen 
has attained in modern times" in Great Britain. And one of his 
by no means partial biographers has well said, — 

" Any man who turns over the magazines and newspapers of that 
period will easily perceive how grandly O'Connell's figure dominated 
in politics, how completely he had dispelled the indifference that had 
so long prevailed on Irish questions, how clearly his agitation stands 
forth as the great fact of the time, . . . The truth is, his position, so 
far from being a common one, is absolutely unique in history. We 
may search in vain through the records of the past for any man, who, 
without the effusion of a drop of blood, or the advantages of office or 
rank, succeeded in governing a people so absolutely and so long^ and 
in creating so entirely the elements of his power. . . . There was no 
rival to his supremacy, there was no restriction to his authority. He 
played with the enthusiasm he had aroused, with the negligent ease 
of a master ; he governed the complicated organization he had created, 
with a sagacity that never failed. He made himself the focus of the 
attention of other lands, and the centre around which the rising intel- 
lect of his own revolved. He transformed the whole social system 
of Ireland ; almost reversed the relative positions of Protestants 
and Catholics ; remodelled by his influence the representative, ecclesi- 
astical, and educational institutions, and created a public opinion that 
surpassed the wildest dreams of his predecessors. Can we wonder at 
the proud exultation with which he exclaimed, ' Grattan sat by the 
cradle of his country and followed her hearse : it was left for me to 
sound the resurrection trumpet, and to show she was not dead, but 
sleeping? ' " 

But the method by which he achieved this success is perhaps 
more remarkable than even the success itself. An Irish poet, 
one of his bitterest assailants thirty years ago, has laid a chaplet 
of atonement on his altar, and one verse runs, — 

** O great world-leader of a mighty age ! 
Praise unto thee let all the people give. 
By thy great name of liberator live 
In golden letters upon history's page ; 
And this thy epitaph while time shall be,— 
He found his country chained^ but left her free.** 



55^ WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

It is natural that Ireland should remember him as her liber- 
ator. But, strange as it may seem to you, I think Europe and 
America will remember him by a higher title. I said in open- 
ing, that the cause of constitutional government is more indebted 
to O'Connell than to any other political leader of the last two 
centuries. What I mean is, that he invented the great method 
of constitutional agitation. Agitator is a title which will last 
longer, which suggests a broader and more permanent influence, 
and entitles him to the gratitude of far more millions, than the 
name Ireland loves to give him. The " first great agitator'' is 
his proudest title to gratitude and fame. Agitation is the 
method that puts the school by the side of the ballot-box. The 
Fremont canvass was the nation's best school. Agitation pre- 
vents rebellion, keeps the peace, and secures progress. Every 
steps she gains is gained forever. Muskets are the weapons of 
animals : agitation is the atmosphere of brains. The old Hindoo 
saw, in his dream, the human race led out to its various for- 
tunes. First, men were in chains which went back to an iron 
hand ; then he saw them led by threads from the brain, which 
went upward to an unseen hand. The first was despotism, iron, 
and ruling by force. The last was civilization, ruling by ideas. 

Agitation is an old word with a new meaning. Sir Robert 
Peel, the first English leader who felt he was its tool, defined it 
to be " the marshalling of the conscience of a nation to mould 
its laws." O'Connell was the first to show and use its power, 
to lay down its principles, to analyze its elements, and mark out 
its metes and bounds. It is voluntary, public, and above-board, 
— no oath-bound secret societies like those of old time in Ireland, 
and of the Continent to-day. Its means are reason and argu- 
ment, — no appeal to arms. Wait patiently for the slow growth 
of public opinion. The Frenchman is angry with his Govern- 
ment : he throws up barricades and shots his guns to the lips. 
A week's fury drags the nation ahead a hand-breadth : reaction 
lets it settle half-way back again. As Lord Chesterfield said, 
a hundred years ago, " You Frenchmen erect barricades, but 
never any barriers." An Englishman is dissatisfied with public 
affairs. He brings his charges, offers his proof, waits for prej- 
udice to relax, for public opinion to inform itself. Then every 
step taken is taken forever : an abuse once removed never re- 
appears in history. Where did he learn this method ? Prac- 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 557 

tically speaking, from O'ConnelL It was he who planted its 
corner-stone,— argument, no violence ; ne political change is 
worth a drop of human blood. His other motto was, " Tell the 
whole truth ;" no concealing half of one's convictions to make 
the other half more acceptable ; no denial of one truth to gain 
hearing for another ; no compromise ; or, as he phrased it, 
" nothing is politically right which is morally wrong." 

Above all, plant yourself on the millions. The sympathy of 
every human being, no matter how ignorant or how humble, 
adds weight to public opinion. At the outset of his career the 
clergy turned a deaf ear to his appeal. They had seen their 
flocks led up to useless slaughter for centuries, and counselled 
submission. The nobility repudiated him : they were either 
traitors or hopeless. Protestants had touched their Ultima 
Thule with Grattan, and seemed settling down in despair. Eng- 
lish Catholics advised waiting till the tyrant grew merciful. 
O'Connell, left alone, said, " I will forge these four millions of 
Irish hearts into a thunderbolt, which shall suffice to dash this 
despotism to pieces." And he did it. Living under an aristo- 
cratic government, himself of the higher tlass, he anticipated 
Lincoln's wisdom, and framed his movement " for the people, 
of the people, and by the people." It is a singular fact, that, 
the freer a nation becomes, the more utterly democratic the 
form of its institutions, this outside agitation, this pressure of 
public opinion to direct political action, becomes more and more 
necessary. The general judgment is, that the freest possible 
government produces the freest possible men and women, — the 
most individual, the least servile to the judgment of others. 
But a moment's reflection will show any man that this is an 
unreasonable expectation, and that, on the contrary, entire 
equality and freedom in political forms almost inevitably tend 
to make the individual subside into the mass, and lose his 
identity in the general whole. Suppose we stood in England 
to-night. There is the nobility, and here is the Church. There 
is the trading-class and here is the literary. A broad gulf sepa- 
rates the four ; and provided a member of either can conciliate 
his own section, he can afford, in a very large measure, to de- 
spise the judgment of the other three. He has, to some extent, 
a refuge and a breakwater against the tyranny of what we cali 
public opinion, But in a country like ours, pf ^bsolutQ demo- 



558 WENDELL PHILLIPS. • 

cratic equality, public opinion is not only omnipotent, it is omni- 
present. There is no refuge from its tyranny ; there is no hiding 
from its reach ; and the result is, that if you take the old Greek 
lantern, and go about to seek among a hundred, you will find 
not one single American who really has not, or who does not 
fancy at least that he has, something to gain or lose in his am- 
bition, his social life, or his business, from the good opinion and 
the votes of those about him. And the consequence is, that, 
instead of being a mass of individuals, each one fearlessly blurt- 
ing out his own convictions, as a nation, compared with other 
nations, we are a mass of cowards. More than all other people, 
we are afraid of each other. 

If you were a caucus to-night, and I were your orator, none of 
you could get beyond the necessary and timid limitations of 
party. You not only would not demand, you would not allow 
me to utter, one word of what you really thought, and what I 
thought. You would demand of me — and my value as a caucus 
speaker would depend entirely on the adroitness and the vigi- 
lance with which I met the demand — that I should not utter one 
single word which would compromise the vote of next week. 
That is politics ; so with the press. Seemingly independent, and 
sometimes really so, the press can afford only to mount the 
cresting wave, not go beyond it. The editor might as well 
shoot his reader with a bullet as with a new idea. He must hit 
the exact line of the opinion of the day. I am not finding fault 
with him : I am only describing him. Some three years ago I 
took to one of the freest of the Boston journals a letter, and by 
appropriate consideration induced its editor to print it. And as 
we glanced along its contents, and came to the concluding state- 
ment, he said, " Couldn't you omit that ?" I said, ** No : I 
wrote it for that; it is the gist of the statement." — "Well," 
said he, "it is true : there is not a boy in the streets that does 
not know it is true ; but I wish you could omit it." 

I insisted ; and the next morning, fairly and justly, he printed 
the whole. Side by side he put an article of his own, in which 
he said, " We copy in the next column an article from Mr. 
Phillips, and we only regret the absurd and unfounded state- 
ment with which he concludes it." He had kept his promise 
by printing the article : he saved his reputation by printing ihe 
comm.ent. And that, again, is the inevitable, the essential 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 559 

limitation of the press in a republican community. Our insti- 
tutions, floating unanchored on the shifting surface of popular 
opinion, cannot afford to hold back, or to draw forward, a hated 
question, and compel a reluctant public to look at it and to con- 
sider it. Hence, as you see at once, the moment a large issue, 
twenty years ahead of its age, presents itself to the considera- 
tion of an empire or of a republic, just in proportion to the 
freedom of its institutions is the necessity of a platform outside 
of the press, of politics, and of its church, whereon stand men 
with no candidate to elect, with no plan to carry, with no reputa- 
tion to stake, with no object but the truth, no purpose but to 
tear the question open and let the light through it. So much in 
explanation of a word infinitely hated, — agitation and agitators, 
— but an element which the progress of modern government has 
developed more and more every day. 

The great invention we trace in its twilight and seed to the 
days of the Long Parliament. Defoe and L' Estrange, later 
down, were the first prominent Englishmen to fling pamphlets 
at the House of Commons. Swift ruled England by pamphlets. 
"Wilberforce summoned the Church, and sought the alliance of 
influential classes. But O'Connell first showed a profound faith 
in the human tongue. He descried afar off the coming omnip- 
otence of the press. He called the millions to his side, appre- 
ciated the infinite weight of the simple human heart and con- 
science, and grafted democracy into the British Empire. The 
later Abolitionists, Buxton, Sturge, and Thompson, borrowed 
his method. Cobden flung it in the face of the almost omnip- 
otent landholders of England, and broke the Tory party for- 
ever. They only haunt upper air now in the stolen garments of 
the Whigs. The English administration recognizes this new 
partner in the Government, and waits to be moved on. Gar- 
rison brought the new weapon to our shores. The only wholly 
useful and thoroughly defensible war Christendom has seen in 
this century, the greatest civil and social change the English 
race ever saw, are the result. 

This great servant and weapon, peace and constitutional gov- 
ernment owe to O'Connell. Who has given progress a greater 
boon ? What single agent has done as much to bless and im- 
prove the world for the last fifty years ? 

O'Connell has been charged with coarse, violent, and intern- 



560 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

perate language. The criticism is of little importance. Stupor 
and palsy never understand life. White-livered indifference is 
always disgusted and annoyed by earnest conviction. Protes- 
tants criticised Luther in the same way. It took three centuries 
to carry us far off enough to appreciate his colossal proportions. 
It is a hundred years to-day since O'Connell was born. It will 
take another hundred to put us at such an angle as will enable 
us correctly to measure his stature. Premising that it would be 
folly to find fault with a man struggling for life because his atti- 
tudes were ungraceful, remembering the Scythian king's answer 
to Alexander, criticising his strange weapon, — " If you knew 
how precious freedom was, you would defend it even with axes," 
— we must see that O'Connell's own explanation is evidently 
sincere and true. He found the Irish heart so cowed, and Eng- 
lishmen so arrogant, that he saw it needed an independence 
verging on insolence, a defiance that touched extremest limits, 
to breathe self-respect into his own race, teach the aggressor 
manners, and sober him into respectful attention. It was the 
same with us Abolitionists. Webster had taught the North the 
'bated breath and crouching of a slave. It needed with us an 
attitude of independence that was almost insolent, it needed 
that we should exhaust even the Saxon vocabulary of scorn, to 
fitly utter the righteous and haughty contempt that honest men 
had for man-stealers. Only in that way could we wake the 
North to self-respect, or teach the South that at length she had 
met her equal, if not her master. On a broad canvas, meant 
for the public square, the tiny lines of a Dutch interior would be 
invisible. In no other circumstances was the French maxim, 
" You can never make a revolution with rose-water," more 
profoundly true. The world has hardly yet learned how deep 
a philosophy lies hid in Hamlet's, — 

*' Nay, and thou' It mouth, 
I'll rant as well as thou." 

O'Connell has been charged with insincerity in urging repeal, 
and those who defended his sincerity have leaned toward allow- 
ing that it proved his lack of common sense. I think both critics 
mistaken. His earliest speeches point to repeal as his ultimate 
object : indeed, he valued emancipation largely as a means to 
that end. No fair view of his whole life will leave the slightest 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. $6l 

ground to doubt his sincerity. As for the reasonableness and 
necessity of the measure, I think every year proves them. Con- 
sidering O'Connell's position, I wholly sympathize in his pro- 
found and unshaken loyalty to the empire. Its share in the 
British Empire makes Ireland's strength and importance. 
Standing alone among the vast and massive sovereignties of 
Europe, she would be weak, insignificant, and helpless. Were 
I an Irishman I should cling to the empire. 

Fifty or sixty years hence, when scorn of race has vanished, 
and bigotry is lessened, it may be possible for Ireland to be safe 
and free while holding the position to England that Scotland 
does. But during this generation and the next, O'Connell was 
wise in claiming that Ireland's rights would never be safe with- 
out " Home Rule." A substantial repeal of the union should be 
every Irishman's earnest aim. Were I their adviser, I should 
constantly repeat what Grattan said iu 1810, *' The best advice, 
gentlemen, I can give on all occasions is, ' Keep knocking at the 
union.' " 

We imagine an Irishman to be only a zealot on fire. We 
fancy Irish spirit and eloquence to be only blind, reckless, head- 
long enthusiasm. But, in truth, Grattan was the soberest leader 
of his day ; holding scrupulously back the disorderly elements 
which fretted under his curb. There was one hour, at least, 
when a word from him would have lighted a democratic revolt 
throughout the empire. And the most remarkable of O'Con- 
nell's gifts was neither his eloquence nor his sagacity : it was 
his patience, — " patience, all the passion of great souls ;" the 
tireless patience, which, from 1800 to 1820, went from town to 
town, little aided by the press, to plant the seeds of an intelli- 
gent and united, as well as hot patriotism. Then, after many 
years and long toil, waiting for rivals to be just, for prejudice 
to wear out, and for narrowness to grow wise, using British 
folly and oppression as his wand, he moulded the enthusiasm 
of the most excitable of races, the just and inevitable indigna- 
tion of four millions of Catholid^, the hate of plundered poverty, 
priest, noble, and peasant, into one fierce, though harmonious 
mass. He held it in careful check, with sober moderation, 
watchmg every opportunity, attracting ally after ally, never 
forfeiting any possible friendship, alloA^ing no provocation to 
5tir him to anything that would not help his cause, compelling 



562 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

each hottest and most ignorant of his followers to remember 
that '* he who commits a crime helps the enemy." At last, 
when the hour struck, this power was made to achieve justice 
for itself, and put him in London,— him, this despised Irishman, 
this hated Catholic, this mere demagogue and man of words, 
him, — to hold the Tory party in one hand, and the Whig party 
in the other ; all this without shedding a drop of blood, or dis- 
turbing for a moment the peace of the empire. While O'Con- 
nell held Ireland in his hand, her people were more orderly, 
law-abiding, and peaceful than for a century before, or during 
any year since. The strength of this marvellous control passes 
comprehension. Out West I met an Irishman whose father held 
him up to see O'Connell address the two hundred thousand men 
at Tara, — literally to see, not to hear him, I said, * But you 
could not all hear even his voice." — " Oh, no, sir ! Only about 
thirty thousand could hear him, but we all kept as still and 
silent as if we did." With magnanimous frankness O'Connell 
once said, " I never could have held those monster meetings 
without a crime, without disorder, tumult, or quarrel, except 
for Father Mathew's aid." Any man can build a furnace, and 
turn water into steam, — yes, if careless, make it rend his dwell- 
ing in pieces. Genius builds the locomotive, harnesses this 
terrible power in iron traces, holds it with master-hand in useful 
limits, and gives it to the peaceable service of man. The Irish 
people were O'Connell's locomotive, sagacious patience and 
moderation the genius that built it. Parliament and justice the 
station he reached. 

Every one who has studied O'Connell's life sees his marked 
likeness to Luther, — the unity of both their lives ; their wit ; the 
same massive strength, even if coarse-grained ; the ease with 
which each reached the masses, the power with which they 
wielded them ; the same unrivalled eloquence, fit for any audi- 
ence ; the same instinct of genius that led them constantly to 
acts, which, as Voltaire said, " Foolish men call rash, but 
wisdom sees to be brave ;" the same broad success. But 
O'Connell had one great element which Luther lacked, — the 
universality of his sympathy ; the far-reaching sagacity which 
discerned truth afar off, just struggling above the horizon ; the 
loyal, brave, and frank spirit which acknowledged and served 
it ; the profound and rare faith which believed that " the whole 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 563 

of truth can never do harm to the whole of virtue." From the 
serene height of intellect and judgment to which God's gifts had 
lifted him, he saw clearly that no one right was ever in the way 
of another, that injustice harms the wrong-doer even more than 
the victim, that whoever puts a chain on another fastens it also 
on himself. Serenely confident that the truth is always safe, 
and justice always expedient, he saw that intolerance is only 
want of faith. He who stifles free discussion, secretly doubts 
whether what he professes to believe is really true. Coleridge 
says, " See how triumphant in debate and motion O'Connell is ! 
Why ? Because he asserts a broad principle, acts up to it, rests 
his body on it, and has faith in it." 

Co-worker with Father Mathew ; champion of the Dissenters ; 
advocating the substantial principles of the Charter, though not 
a Chartist ; foe of the corn laws ; battling against slavery, 
whether in India or the Carolinas ; the great democrat who in 
Europe seventy years ago called the people to his side ; starting 
a movement of the people, for the people, by the people, — show 
me another record as broad and brave as this in the European 
history of our century. Where is the English statesman, where 
the Irish leader, who can claim one ? No wonder every Eng- 
lishman hated and feared him ! He wounded their prejudices 
at every point. Whig and Tory, timid Liberal, narrow Dis- 
senter, bitter Radical — all feared and hated this broad, brave 
soul, who dared to follow Truth wherever he saw her, whose 
toleration was as broad as human nature, and his sympathy as 
boundless as the sea. 

To show you that he never took a leaf from our American 
gospel of compromise ; that he never filed his tongue to silence 
on one truth, fancying so to help another ; that he never sacri- 
ficed any race to save even Ireland,— let me compare him with 
Kossuth, whose only merits were his eloquence and his patriot- 
ism. When Kossuth was in Faneuil Hall, he exclaimed, " Here 
is a flag without a stain, a nation without a crime !" We Abo- 
litionists appealed to him, " O eloquent son of the Magyar, come 
to break chains ! have you no word, no pulse-beat, for fou*- 
millions of negroes bending under a yoke ten times heavier than 
that of Hungary?" He answered, "I would forget anybody, 
I would praise anything to help Hungary." 

O'Connell never said anything like that. When I was in 



564 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Naples, I asked Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, a Tory, " Is O'Con- 
nell an honest man ?" — " As honest a man as ever breathed," 
said he, and then told me this story. " When, in 1830, O'Con- 
nell entered Parliament, the Anti-Slavery cause was so weak 
that it had only Lushington and myself to speak for it ; and we 
agreed, that when he spoke I should cheer him, and when I 
spoke he should cheer me ; and these were the only cheers we 
ever got. O'Connell came, with one Irish member to support 
him. A large number of members (I think Buxton said twenty- 
seven), whom we called the West-India interest, the Bristol 
party, the slave party, went to him, saying, ' O'Connell, at last 
you are in the House, with one helper. If you will never go 
down to Freemasons' Hall with Buxton and Brougham, here 
are twenty-seven votes for you on every Irish question. If you 
work with those Abolitionists, count us always against you.' " 

It was a terrible temptation. How many a so-called states- 
man would have yielded ! O'Connell said, " Gentlemen, God 
knows I speak for the saddest people the sun sees ; but may my 
right hand forget its cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof 
of my mouth, if, to save Ireland, — even Ireland, — 1 forget the 
negro one single hour I" — " From that day," said Buxton, 
" Lushington and I never went into the lobby that O'Connell did 
not follow us." 

Learn of him, friends, the hardest lesson we ever have set us, 
that of toleration. The foremost Catholic of his age, the most 
stalwart champion of the Church, he was also broadly and sin- 
cerely tolerant of every faith. His toleration had no limit, and 
no qualification. 

I scorn and scout the word " toleration." It is an insolent 
term. No man, properly speaking, tolerates another. I do not 
tolerate a Catholic, neither does he tolerate me. We are equal, 
and acknowledge each other's right : that is the correct state- 
ment. 

That every man should be allowed freely to worship God 
according to his conscience, that no man's civil rights should 
be affected by his religious creed, were both cardinal principles 
of O'Connell. He had no fear that any doctrine of his faith 
could be endangered by the freest possible discussion. Learn 
of him, also, sympathy with every race, and every form of 
oppression. No matter who was the sufferer, or what the form 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 565 

of the injustice, — starving Yorkshire peasant, imprisoned Chart- 
ist, persecuted Protestant, or negro slave ; no matter of what 
right, personal or civil, the victim had been robbed ; no matter 
what religious pretext or political juggle alleged " necessity" as 
an excuse for his oppression ; no matter with what solemnities 
he had been devoted on the altar of slavery, — the moment 
O'Connell saw him, the altar and the God sank together in the 
dust, the victim was acknowledged a man and a brother, equal 
in all rights, and entitled to all the aid the great Irishman could 
give him. 

I have no time to speak of his marvellous success at the bar ; 
of that profound skill in the law which enabled him to conduct 
such an agitation, always on the verge of illegality and violence, 
without once subjecting himself or his followers to legal penalty, 
— an agitation under a code of which Brougham said, " No 
Catholic could lift his hand under it without breaking the law." 
I have no time to speak of his still more remarkable success in 
the House of Commons. Of Flood's failure there, Grattan had 
said, " He was an oak of the forest, too old and too great to be 
transplanted at fifty." Grattan's own success there was but 
moderate. The power O'Connell wielded against varied, bitter, 
and unscrupulous opposition was marvellous, I have no time 
to speak of his personal independence, his deliberate courage, 
moral and physical, his unspotted private character, his unfail- 
ing hope, the versatility of his talent, his power of tireless work, 
his ingenuity and boundless resource, his matchless self-posses- 
sion in every emergency, his ready and inexhaustible wit. But 
any reference to O'Connell that omitted his eloquence would be 
painting Wellington in the House of Lords without mention of 
Torres Vedras or Waterloo. 

Broadly considered, his eloquence has never been equalled in 
modern times, certainly not in English speech. Do you think 
I am partial ? I will vouch John Randolph of Roanoke, the 
Virginia slaveholder, who hated an Irishman almost as much as 
he hated a Yankee, himself an orator of no mean level. Hear- 
ing O'Connell, he exclaimed, " This is the man, these are the 
lips, the most eloquent that speak English in my day." I think 
he was right. I remember the solemnity of Webster, the grace 
of Everett, the rhetoric of Choate ; I know the eloquence that 
lay hid in the iron logic of Calhoun ; I have melted beneath the 



566 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

magnetism of Sergeant S. Prentiss of Mississippi, who wielded 
a power few men ever had. It has been my fortune to sit at the 
feet of the great speal<ers of the English tongue on the other 
side of the ocean. But I think all of them together never sur- 
passed, and no one of them ever equalled, O'Conncll. Nature 
intended him for our Demosthenes. Never since the great 
Greek has she sent forth any one so lavishly gifted for his work 
as a tribune of the people. In the first place, he had a magnifi- 
cent presence, impressive in bearing, massive like that of Jupi- 
ter. Webster himself hardly outdid him in the majesty of his 
proportions. To be sure, he had not Webster's craggy face and 
precipice of brow, nor his eyes glowing like anthracite coal ; 
nor had he the lion roar of Mirabeau. But his presence filled 
the eye. A small O'Connell would hardly have been an O'Con- 
nell at all. These physical advantages are half the battle. I 
remember Russell Lowell telling us that Mr. Webster came 
home from Washington at the time the Whig party thought of 
dissolution a year or two before his death, and went down to 
Faneuil Hall to protest ; drawing himself up to his loftiest pro- 
portion, his brow clothed with thunder, before the listening 
thousands, he said, " Well, gentlemen, I am a W^hig, a Massa- 
chusetts Whig, a Faneuil Hall Whig, a revolutionary Whig, a 
constitutional Whig. If you break the Whig party, sir, where 
am I to go ?" And says Lowell, " We held our breath, think- 
ing where he could go. If he had been five feet three, we should 
have said, ' Who cares where you go ? ' " So it was with 
O'Connell. There was something majestic in his presence before 
he spoke ; and he added to it what Webster had not, what Clay 
might have lent, — grace. Lithe as a boy at seventy, every atti- 
tude a picture, every gesture a grace, he was still all nature : 
nothing but nature seemed to speak all over him. Then he had 
a voice that covered the gamut. The majesty of his indigna- 
tion, fitly uttered in tones of superhuman power, made him able 
to " indict" a nation, in spite of Burke's protest. 

I heard him once say, " I send my voice across the Atlantic, 
careering like the thunder-storm against the breeze, to tell the 
slaveholder of the Carolinas that God's thunderbolts are hot, 
and to remind the bondman that the dawn of his redemption is 
already breaking." You seemed to hear the tones come echo- 
ing back to London from the Rocky Mountains. Then, with 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 567 

the slightest possible Irish brogue, he would tell a story, while 
all Exeter Hall shook with laughter. The next moment, tears 
in his voice like a Scotch song, five thousand men wept. And 
all the while no effort. He seemed only breathing, 

" As effortless as woodland nooks 

Send violets up, and paint them blue." 

We used to say of Webster, " This is a great effort ;" of 
Everett, *' Itis a beautiful effort ;" but you never used the word 
" effort" in speaking of O'Connell. It provoked you that he 
would not make an effort. And this wonderful power, it was 
not a thunderstorm : he flanked you with his wit, he surprised 
you out of yourself ; you were conquered before you knew it. 
His marvellous voice, its almost incredible power and sweetness, 
Bulwer has well described : 

" Once to my sight that giant form was given, 
Walled by wide air, and roofed by boundless heaven. 
Beneath his feet the human ocean lay. 
And wave on wave rolled into spare away. 
Methought no clarion could have sent its sound 
Even to the centre of the hosts around ; 
And, as I thought, rose the sonorous swell. 
As from some church-tower swings the silvery bell. 
Aloft and clear, from airy tide to tide 
It glided, easy as a bird may glide. 
Even to the verge of that vast audience sent, 
It played with each wild passion as it went : 
Now stirred the uproar, now the murmur stilled. 
And sobs or laughter answered as it willed." 

Webster could awe a senate, Everett could charm a college, 
and Choate cheat a jury ; Clay could magnetize the million, and 
Corwin lead them captive. O'Connell was Clay, Corwin, Choate, 
Everett, and Webster in one. Before the courts, logic ; at the 
bar of the senate, unanswerable and dignified ; on the platform, 
grace, wit, and pathos ; before the masses, a whole man. 
Carlyle says, " He is God's own anointed king whose single 
word melts all wills into his." This describes O'Connell, 
Emerson says, " There is no true eloquence, unless there is a 



5^8 WEXDELL nirLLIPS. 

man behind the speech." Daniel O'Connell was listened to 
because all England and all Ireland knew that there was a man 
behind the speech,— one who could be neither bought, bullied 
nor cheated. He held the masses free but willing subjects in 
his hand. 

He owed this power to the courage that met every new ques- 
tion frankly, and concealed none of his convictions ; to an en- 
tireness of devotion that made the people feel he was all their 
own ; to a masterly brain that made them sure they were always 
safe in his hands. Behind them were ages of bloodshed : every 
rising had ended at the scaffold ; even Grattan brought them to 
1798. O'Connell said, " Follow me : put your feet where mine 
have trod, and a sheriff shall never lay hand on your shoulder." 
And the great lawyer kept his pledge. 

This unmatched, long-continued power almost passes belief. 
You can only appreciate it by comparison. Let me carry you 
back to the mob-year of 1835, in this country, when the Abo- 
litionists were hunted, when the streets roared with riot, when 
from Boston to Baltimore, from St. Louis to Philadelphia, a 
mob took possession of every city ; when private houses were 
invaded and public halls were burned, press after press was 
thrown mto the river, and Lovejoy baptized freedom with his 
blood. You remember it. Respectable journals warned the 
mob that they were playing into the hands of the Abolitionists 
Webster and Clay and the staff of Whig statesmen, told the 
people that the truth floated farther on the shouts of the mob 
than the most eloquent lips could carry it. But law-abiding 
Protestant, educated America could not be held back. Neither 
Whig chiefs nor respectable journals could keep these people 
quiet. Go to England. When the Reform Bill of 1831 was 
thrown out from the House of Lords, the people were tumultu- 
ous ; and Melbourne and Grey, Russell and Brougham, Lans- 
downe, Holland, and Macaulay. the Whig chiefs, cried out 
''Don't violate the law : you help the Tories ! Riots put back 
the bill." But quiet, sober John Bull, law-abiding, could not 
do without it. Birmingham was three days in the hands of a 
mob. Castles were burned. Wellington ordered the Scotch 
Greys to rough-grind their swords as at Waterloo. This was 
the Whig aristocracy of England. O'Connell had neither office 
nor title. Behind him were four million people, steeped in 



e 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 569 

utter wretchedness, sore with the oppression of centuries, 
ignored by statute. 

For thirty restless and turbulent years he stood in front of 
them, and said, '* Remember, he that commits a crime helps the 
enemy." And during that long and fearful struggle, I do not 
remember one of his followers ever being convicted of a politi- 
cal offence ; and during this period crimes of violence were very 
rare. There is no such record in our history. Neither in clas- 
sic nor in modern times can the man be produced who held a 
million of people in his right hand so passive. It was due to 
the consistency and unity of a character that had hardly a flaw. 
I do not forget your soldiers, orators, or poets, — any of your 
leaders. But when I consider O'Connell's personal disinter- 
estedness, — his rare, brave fidelity to every cause his principles 
covered, no matter how unpopular, or how embarrassing to his 
main purpose, — that clear, far-reaching vision, and true heart, 
which, on most moral and political questions, set him so much 
ahead of his times ; his eloquence, almost equally effective in 
the courts, in the senate, and before the masses ; that sagacity 
which set at naught the malignant vigilance of the whole im- 
perial bar, watching thirty years for a misstep ; when I remem- 
ber that he invented his tools, and then measure his limited 
means with his vast success, bearing in mind its nature ; when 
I see the sobriety and moderation with which he used his 
measureless power, and the lofty, generous purpose of his whole 
life, — I am ready to affirm that he was, all things considered, 
the greatest man the Irish race ever produced. 



THE SCHOLAR IN A REPUBLIC 



Mr. President and Brothers (>? the P. B. K : 

A hundred years ago our society was planted — a slip from 
the older root in Virginia. The parent seed, tradition says, was 
French, — part of that conspiracy for free speech whose leaders 
prated democracy in the salons^ while they carefully held on to 
the flesh-pots of society by crouching low to kings and their 
mistresses, and whose final object of assault was Christianity 
itself. Voltaire gave the watchword, — 

** Crush the wretch." 
" Ecrasez r infante. " 

No matter how much or how little truth there may be in the 
tradition : no matter what was the origin or what was the object 
of our society, if it had any special one, both are long since for- 
gotten. We stand now simply a representative of free, brave, 
American scholarship. I emphasize American scholarship. 

In one of those glowing, and as yet unequalled pictures which 
Everett drew for us, here and elsewhere, of Revolutionary 
scenes, I remember his saying, that the independence we then 
won, if taken in its literal and narrow sense, was of no interest 
and little value ; but, construed in the fulness of its real mean- 
ing, it bound us to a distinctive American character and pur- 
pose, to a keen sense ot large responsibility, and to a generous 
self-devotion. It is under the shadow of such unquestioned 
authority that I use the term " American scholarship." 

Our society was, no doubt, to some extent, a protest against 
the sombre theology of New England, where, a hundred years 



' Address at the Centennial Anniversary of the Phi Beta Kappa 
of Harvard College, June 30th, 1881. 



WENDELT. riiirj;ips. 571 

ago, the atmosphere was black with sermons, and where religious 
speculation beat uselessly against the narrowest limits. 

The first generation of Puritans — though Lowell does let 
Cromwell call them " a small colony of pinched fanatics" — in- 
cluded some men, indeed- not a few, worthy to walk close to 
Roger Williams and Sir Harry Vane, the two men deepest in 
thought and bravest in speech of all who spoke English in their 
day, and equal to any in practical statesmanship. Sir Harry 
Vane was in my judgment the noblest human being who ever 
walked the streets of yonder city— I do not forget Franklin or 
Sam Adams, Washington or Fayette, Garrison or John Brown. 
But Vane dwells an arrow's flight above them all, and his touch 
consecrated the continent to measureless toleration of opinion 
and entire equality of rights. We are told we can find in Plato 
" all the intellectual life of Europe for two thousand years :" so 
you can find in Vane the pure gold of two hundred and fifty 
years of American civilization, with no particle of its dross. 
Plato would have welcomed him to the Academy, and Fenelon 
kneeled with him at the altar. He made Somers and John Mar- 
shall possible ; like Carnot, he organized victory ; and Milton 
pales before him in the stainlessness of his record. He stands 
among English statesmen pre-eminently the representative, in 
practice and in theory, of serene faith in the safety of trusting 
truth wholly to her own defence. For other men we walk back- 
ward, and throw over their memories the mantle of charity and 
excuse, saying reverently, " Remember the temptation and the 
age." But Vane's ermine has no stain ; no act of his needs 
explanation or apology ; and in thought he stands abreast of our 
age, — like pure intellect, belongs to all time. 

Carlyle said, in years when his words were worth heeding, 
" Young men, close your Byron, and open your Goethe." If 
my counsel had weight in these halls, I should say, '* Young 
men, close your John Winthrop and Washington, your Jefferson 
and Webster, and open Sir Harry Vane." The generation that 
knew Vane gave to our Alma Mater for a seal the simple pledge, 
— Veritas. 

But the narrowness and poverty of colonial life soon starved 
out this element. Harvard was rededicated Chris to et Eccle- 
sice ; and, up to the middle of the last century, free thought in 
religion meant Charles Chauncy and the Brattle Street Church 



57:? WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

protest, while free thought hardly existed anywhere else. But a 
single generation changed all this. A hundred years ago there 
were pulpits that led the popular movement ; while outside of 
religion and of what called itself literature, industry and a jeal- 
ous sense of personal freedom obeyed, in their rapid growth, the 
law of their natures. English common sense and those munic- 
ipal institutions born of the common law, and which had saved 
and sheltered it, grew inevitably too large for the eggshell of 
English dependence, and allowed it to drop off as naturally as 
the chick does when she is ready. There was no change of law, 
• — nothing that could properly be called revolution, — only noise- 
less growth, the seed bursting into flower, infancy becoming man- 
hood. It was life, in its omnipotence, rending whatever dead 
matter confined it. So have I seen the tiny weeds of a luxuriant 
Italian spring upheave the colossal foundations of the Caesars' 
palace, and leave it a mass of ruins. 

But when the veil was withdrawn, what stood revealed aston- 
ished the world. It showed the undreamt power, the serene 
strength, of simple manhood, free from the burden and restraint 
of absurd institutions in Church and State. The grandeur of 
this new Western constellation gave courage to Europe, result- 
ing in the French Revolution, the greatest, the most unmixed, 
the most unstained and wholly perfect blessing Europe has had 
in modern times, unless we may possibly except the Reforma- 
tion, and the invention of printing. 

What precise effect that giant wave had when it struck our 
shore we can only guess. History is, for the most part, an idle 
amusement, the day-dream of pedants and triflers. The details 
of events, the actors' motives, and their relation to each other, 
are buried with them. How impossible to learn the exact truth 
of what took place yesterday under your next neighbor's roof ! 
Yet we complacently argue and speculate about matters a 
thousand miles off, and a thousand years ago, as if we knew 
them. When I was a student here, my favorite study was his- 
tory. The world and affairs have shown me that one half of 
history is loose conjecture, and much of the rest is the writer's 
opinion. But most men see facts, not with their eyes, but with 
their prejudices. Any one familiar with courts will testify how 
rare it is for an honest man to give a perfectly correct account of 
a transaction. We are tempted to see facts as we think they 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 573 

ought to be. or wish they were. And yet journals are the favor- 
ite original sources of history. Tremble, my good friend, if 
your sixpenny neighbor keeps a journal. " It adds a new terror 
to death." You shall go down to your children not in your fair 
lineaments and proportions, but with the smirks, elbows, and 
angles he sees you with. Journals are excellent to record the 
depth of the last snow and the date when the Mayflower opens ; 
but when you come to men's motives and characters, journals 
are the magnets that get near the chronometer of history and 
make all its records worthless. You can count on the fingers of 
your two hands all the robust minds that ever kept journals. 
Only milksops and fribbles indulge in that amusement, except 
now and then a respectable mediocrity. One such journal night- 
mares New England annals, emptied into history by respectable 
middle-aged gentlemen, who fancy that narrowness and spleen, 
like poor wine, mellow into truth when they get to be a century 
old. But you might as well cite the Daily Advertiser of 1850 
as authority on one of Garrison's actions. 

And, after all, of what value are these minutiae t Whether 
Luther's zeal was partly kindled by lack of gain from the sale of 
indulgences, whether Boston rebels were half smugglers and 
half patriots, what matters it now ? Enough that he meant to 
wrench the gag from Europe's lips, and that they were content 
to suffer keenly, that we might have an untrammelled career. 
We can only hope to discover the great currents and massive 
forces which have shaped our lives : all else is trying to solve a 
problem of whose elements we know nothing. As the poet his- 
torian of the last generation says so plaintively, " History comes 
like a beggarly gleaner in the field, after Death, the great lord 
of the domain, has gathered the harvest, and lodged it in his 
garner, which no man may open." 

But we may safely infer that French debate and experience 
broadened and encouraged our fathers. To that we undoubtedly 
owe, in some degree, the theoretical perfection, ingrafted on 
English practical sense and old forms, which marks the founda- 
tion of our republic. English civil life, up to that time, grew 
largely out of custom, rested almost wholly on precedent. For 
our model there was no authority in the record, no precedent on 
the file ; unless you find it, perhaps, partially, in that Long Par- 
liament bill with which Sir Harry Vane would have outgener- 



574 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

ailed Cromwell, if the shameless soldier had not crushed it with 
his muskets. 

Standing on Saxon foundations, and inspired, perhaps, in 
some degree, by Latin example, we have done what no race, no 
nation, no age, had before dared even to try. We have founded 
a republic on the unlimited suffrage of the millions. We have 
actually worked out the problem that man, as God created him, 
may be trusted with self-government. We have shown the 
world that a church without a bishop, and a state without a 
king, is an actual, real, every-day possibility. Look back over 
the history of the race : where will you find a chapter that pre- 
cedes us in that achievement ? Greece had her republics, but 
they were the republics of a few freemen and subjects and many 
slaves ; and '* the battle of Marathon was fought by slaves, un- 
chained from the doorposts of their masters' houses." Italy had 
her republics : they were the republics of wealth and skill and 
family, limited and aristocratic. The Swiss republics were 
groups of cousins. Holland had her republic, — a republic of 
guilds and landholders, trusting the helm of state to property 
and education. And all these, which, at their best, held but a 
million or two within their narrow limits, have gone down in 
the ocean of time. 

A hundred years ago our fathers announced this sublime, 
and, as it seemed then, foolhardy declaration, that God intended 
all men to be free and equal, — all men, without restriction, with- 
out qualification, without limit. A hundred years have rolled 
away since that. venturous declaration ; and to-day, with a ter- 
ritory that joins ocean to ocean, with fifty millions of people, 
with two wars behind her, with the grand achievement of having 
grappled with the fearful disease that threatened her central life, 
and broken four millions of fetters, the great republic, stronger 
than ever, launches into the second century of her existence. 
The history of the world has no such chapter in its breadth, its 
depth, its significance, or its bearing on future history. 

What Wycliffe did for religion, Jefferson and Sam Adams did 
for the State, — they trusted it to the people. He gave the masses 
the Bible, the right to think. Jefferson and Sam Adams gave 
them the ballot, the right to rule. His intrepid advance con- 
templated theirs as its natural, inevitable result. Their serene 
faith completed the gift which the Anglo-Saxon race makes to 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 5/5 

humanity. We have not only established a new measure of the 
possibilities of the race : we have laid on strength, wisdom, and 
skill a new responsibility. Grant that each man's relations to 
God and his neighbor are exclusively his own concern, and that 
he is entitled to all the aid that will make him the best judge of 
these relations ; that the people are the source of all power, and 
their measureless capacity the lever of all progress ; their sense 
of right the court of final appeal in civil affairs ; the institutions 
they create the only ones any power has a right to impose ; that 
the attempt of one class to prescribe the law, the religion, the 
morals, or the trade of another is both unjust and harmful, — and 
the Wycliffe and Jefferson of history mean this if they mean any- 
thing, — then, when, in 1867, Parliament doubled the English 
franchise, Robert Lowe was right in affirming, amid the cheers 
of the House, '* Now the first interest and duty of every English- 
man is to educate the masses — our masters." Then, whoever 
sees farther than his neighbor is that neighbor's servant to lift 
him to such higher level. Then, power, ability, influence, char 
acter, virtue, are only trusts with which to serve our time. 

We all agree in the duty of scholars to help those less favored 
in life, and that this duty of scholars to educate the mass is still 
more imperative in a republic, since a republic trusts the State 
wholly to the intelligence and moral sense of the people. The 
experience of the last forty years shows every man that law has 
no atom of strength, either in Boston or New Orleans, unless, 
and only so far as, public opinion indorses it, and that your life, 
goods, and good name rest on the moral sense, self-respect, and 
law-abiding mood of the men that walk the streets, and hardly 
a whit on the provisions of the statute-book. Come, any one of 
you, outside of the ranks of popular men, and you will not fail 
to find it so. Easy men dream that we live under a government 
of law. Absurd mistake ! we live under a government of men 
and newspapers. Your first attempt to stem dominant and 
keenly-cherished opinions will reveal this to you. 

But what is education ? Of course it is not book-learning. 
Book-learning does not make five per cent of that mass of com- 
mon sense that " runs" the world, transacts its business, secures 
its progress, trebles its power over nature, works out in the long 
run a rough average justice, wears away the world's restraints, 
^ncj lifts off its burdens, The ideal Ycinkee, who " has more 



57^ WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

brains in his hand than others have in their skulls,** is not a 
scholar ; and two thirds of the inventions that enable France to 
double the world's sunshine, and make Old and New England 
the workshops of the world, did not come from colleges or from 
minds trained in the schools of science, but struggled up, forc- 
ing their way against giant obstacles, from the irrepressible 
instinct of untrained natural power. Her workshops, not her 
colleges, made England, for a while, the mistress of the world ; 
and the hardest job her workman had was to make Oxford will- 
ing he should work his wonders. 

So of moral gains. As shrewd an observer as Governor 
Marcy of New York often said he cared nothing for the whole 
press of the seaboard, representing wealth and education (he 
meant book-learning), if it set itself against the instincts of the 
people. Lord Brougham, in a remarkable comment on the life 
of Romilly, enlarges on the fact that the great reformer of the 
penal law found all the legislative and all the judicial power of 
England, its colleges and its bar, marshalled against him, and 
owed his success, as all such reforms do, says his lordship, 
to public meetings and popular instinct. It would be no ex- 
aggeration to say that government itself began in usurpa- 
tion, in the feudalism of the soldier and the bigotry of the 
priest ; that liberty and civilization are only fragments of rights 
wrung from the strong hands of wealth and book-learning. 
Almost all the great truths relating to society were not the re- 
sult of scholarly meditation, " hiving up wisdom with each curi- 
ous year," but have been first heard in the solemn protests of 
martyred patriotism and the loud cries of crushed and starving 
labor. When common sense and the common people have 
stereotyped a principle into a statute, then bookmen come to ex- 
plain how it was discovered and on what ground it rests. The 
world makes history, and scholars write it, one half truly, and 
the other half as their prejudices blur and distort it. 

New England learned more of the principles of toleration 
from a lyceum committee doubting the dicta of editors and 
bishops when they forbade it to put Theodore Parker on its 
platform ; more from a debate whether the Anti-Slavery cause 
should be so far countenanced as to invite one of its advocates 
to lecture ; from Sumner and Emerson, George William Cur- 
tis, and Edwin Whipple, refusing to speak unless a negro could 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 57/ 

buy his way into their halls as freely as any other, — New Eng- 
land has learned more from these lessons than she has or could 
have done from all the treatises on free printing from Milton 
and Roger Williams, through Locke, down to Stuart Mill. 

Selden, the profoundest scholar of his day, affirmed, " No 
man is wiser for his learning;" and that was only an echo of 
the Saxon proverb, " No fool is a perfect fool until he learns 
Latin." Bancroft says of our fathers, that " the wildest the- 
ories of the human reason were reduced to practice by a com- 
munity so humble that no statesman condescended to notice it, 
and a legislation without precedent was produced off-hand by 
the instincts of the people." And Wordsworth testifies that, 
while German schools might well blush for their subserviency, — 

*' A few strong instincts and a few plain rules, 

Among the herdsmen of the Alps, have wrought 
More for mankind at this unhappy day 

Than all the pride of intellect and thought." 

Wycliffe was, no doubt, a learned man. But the learning of 
nis day would have burned him, had it dared, as it did burn his 
dead body afterward. Luther and Melanchthon were scholars, 
but were repudiated by the scholarship of their time, which fol- 
lowed Erasmus, trying " all his life to tread on eggs without 
breaking them ;" he who proclaimed that " peaceful error was 
better than tempestuous truth." What would college-graduate 
Seward weigh, in any scale, against Lincoln bred in affairs ? 

Hence I do not think the greatest things have been done for 
the world by its bookmen. Education is not the chips of arith- 
metic and grammar, — nouns, verbs, and the multiplication 
table ; neither is it that last year's almanac of dates, or series 
of lies agreed upon, which we so often mistake for history. 
Education is not Greek and Latin and the air-pump. Still, I 
rate at its full value the training we get in these walls. Though 
what we actually carry away is little enough, we do get some 
training of our powers, as the gymnast or the fencer does of his 
muscles : we go hence also with such general knowledge of 
what mankind has agreed to consider proved and settled, that 
we know where to reach for the weapon when we need it. 

I have often thought the motto prefixed to his college library 
catalogue by the father of the late Professor Peirce,— Professor 



578 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Peirce, the largest natural genius, the man of the deepest reach 
and firmest grasp and widest sympathy, that God has given to 
Harvard in our day, — whose presence made you the loftiest 
peak and farthest outpost of more than mere scientific thought, 
— the magnet who, with his twin Agassiz, made Harvard for 
forty years the intellectual Mecca of forty States, — his father's 
catalogue bore for a motto, " Scire ubi aliquid invenias magna 
pars eruditionis est /' and that always seemed to me to gauge 
very nearly all we acquired at college, except facility in the use 
of our powers. Our influence in the community does not really 
spring from superior attainments, but from this thorough train- 
ing of faculties, and more even, perhaps, from the deference 
men accord to us. 

Gibbon says we have two educations, one from teachers, and 
the other we give ourselves. This last is the real and only edu- 
cation of the masses, —one gotten from life, from affairs, from 
earning one's bread ; necessity, the mother of invention ; re- 
sponsibility, that teaches prudence, and inspires respect for 
right. Mark the critic out of office : how reckless in assertion, 
how careless of consequences ; and then the caution, fore- 
thought, and fair play of the same man charged with adminis- 
tration. See that young, thoughtless wife suddenly widowed ; 
how wary and skilful ! what ingenuity in guarding her child 
and saving his rights ! Any one who studied Europe forty or 
fifty years ago could not but have marked the level of talk there, 
far below that of our masses. It was of crops and rents, markets 
and marriages, scandal and fun. Watch men here, and how 
often you listen to the keenest discussions of right and wrong, 
this leader's honesty, that party's justice, the fairness of this 
law, the impolicy of that measure ;— lofty, broad topics, training 
morals, widening views. Niebuhr said of Italy, sixty years ago, 
" No one feels himself a citizen. Not only are the people desti- 
tute of hope, but they have not even wishes touching the world's 
affairs ; and hence all the springs of great and noble thoughts 
are choked up." 

In this sense the Fremont campaign of 1856 taught Americans 
more than a hundred colleges ; and John Brown's pulpit at 
Harper's Ferry was equal to any ten thousand ordinary chairs. 
God lifted a million of hearts to his gibbet, as the Roman cross 
lifted a world to itself in that divine sacrifice of two thousand 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 579 

years ago. As much as statesmanship had taugnt in our pre- 
vious eighty years, that one week of intellectual watching and 
weighing and dividing truth taught twenty millions of people. 
Yet how little, brothers, can we claim for bookmen in that 
uprising and growth of 1856 ! And while the first of American 
scholars could hardly find, in the rich vocabulary of Saxon 
scorn, words enough to express, amid the plaudits of his class, 
his loathing and contempt for John Brown, Europe thrilled to 
him as proof that our institutions had not lost all their native 
and distinctive life. She had grown tired of our parrot note and 
cold moonlight reflection of older civilizations. Lansdowne and 
Brougham could confess to Sumner that they had never read a 
page of their contemporary, Daniel Webster ; and you spoke to 
vacant eyes when you named Prescott, fifty years ago, to aver- 
age Europeans ; while Vienna asked, with careless indifference, 
" Seward, who is he ?" But long before our ranks marched up 
State Street to the John Brown song, the banks of the Seine and 
of the Danube hailed the new life which had given us another and 
nobler Washington. Lowell foresaw him when forty years ago 
he sang of, — 

" Truth forever on the scaffold, 

Wrong forever on the throne ; 
Yet that scaffold sways the future : 

And behind the dim unknown 
Standeth God, within the shadow, 

Keeping watch above His own." 

And yet the bookmen, as a class, have not yet acknowledged 
him. 

It is here that letters betray their lack of distinctive American 
character. Fifty million of men God gives us to mould ; burn- 
ing questions, keen debate, great interests trying to vindicate 
their right to be, sad wrongs brought to the bar of public judg- 
ment, — these are the people's schools. Timid scholarship either 
shrinks from sharing in these agitations, or denounces them as 
vulgar and dangerous interference by incompetent hands with 
matters above them. A chronic distrust of the people pervades 
the book-educated class of the North ; they shrink from that free 
speech which is God's normal school for educating men, throw- 
ing upon them the grave responsibility of deciding great ques- 



58o WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

tions, and so lifting them to a higher level of intellectual and 
moral life. Trust the people — the wise and the ignorant, the 
good and the bad — with the gravest questions, and in the end 
you educate the race. At the same time you secure, not perfect 
institutions, not necessarily good ones, but the best institutions 
possible while human nature is the basis and the only material 
to build with. Men are educated and the State uplifted by allow- 
ing all — every one — to broach all their mistakes and advocate 
all their errors. The community that will not protect its most 
ignorant and unpopular member in the free utterance of his 
opinions, no matter how false or hateful, is only a gang of 
slaves ! 

Anacharsis went into the Archon's court at Athens, heard a 
case argued by the great men of that city, and saw the vote by 
five hundred men. Walking in the streets, some one asked 
him, " What do you think of Athenian liberty ?" " I think," 
said he, " wise men argue cases, and fools decide them." Just 
what that timid scholar, two thousand years ago, said in the 
streets of Athens, that which calls itself scholarship here says 
to-day of popular agitation, --that it lets wise men argue ques- 
tions and fools decide them. But that Athens where fools de- 
cided the gravest questions of policy and of right and wrong, 
where property you had gathered wearily to-day might be wrung 
from you by the caprice of the mob to-morrow, — that v^ry 
Athens probably secured, for its era, the greatest amount of 
human happiness and nobleness ; invented art, and sounded for 
us the depths of philosophy. God lent to it the largest intellects, 
and it flashes to-day the torch that gilds yet the mountain peaks 
of the Old World : while Egypt, the hunker conservative of 
antiquity, where nobody dared to differ from the priest or to be 
wiser than his grandfather ; where men pretended to be alive, 
though swaddled in the grave-clothes of creed and custom as 
close as their mummies were in linen, — that Egypt is hid in the 
tomb it inhabited, and the intellect Athens has trained for us 
digs to-day those ashes to find out how buried and forgotten 
hunkerism lived and acted. 

I knew a signal instance of this disease of scholar's distrust, 
and the cure was as remarkable. In boyhood and early life I 
was honored with the friendship of Lothrop MoiJev. He grew 
up in the thin air of Boston provincialism, and pined on such 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 581 

weak diet. I remember sitting with him once in the State House 
when he was a member of our Legislature. With biting words 
and a keen crayon he sketched the ludicrous points in the minds 
and persons of his fellow-members, and, tearing up the pictures, 
said scornfully, " What can become of a country with such 
fellows as these making its laws ? No safe investments ; your 
good name lied away any hour, and little worth keeping if it 
were not." In vain I combated the folly. He went to Europe, 
— spent four or five years. I met him the day he landed, on his 
return. As if our laughing talk in the State House had that 
moment ended, he took my hand with the sudden exclamation, 
*' You were all right : I was all wrong ! It is a country worth 
dying for ; better still, worth living and working for, to make it 
all it can be !" Europe made him one of the most American of 
all Americans. Some five years later, when he sounded that 
bugle-note in his letter to the London Times, some critics who 
knew his early mood, but not its change, suspected there might 
be a taint of ambition in what they thought so sudden a conver- 
sion. I could testify that the mood was five years old : years 
before the slightest shadow of political expectation had dusked 
the clear mirror of his scholar life. 

This distrust shows itself in the growing dislike of universal 
suffrage, and the efforts to destroy it made of late by all our easy 
classes The white South hates universal suffrage ; the so-called 
cultivated North distrusts it. Journal and college, social-science 
convention and the pulpit, discuss the propriety of restraining 
it. Timid scholars tell their dread of it. Carlyle, that bundle 
of sour prejudices, flouts universal suffrage with a blasphemy 
that almost equals its ignorance. See his words : " Democracy 
will prevail when men believe the vote of Judas as good as that 
of Jesus Christ." No democracy ever claimed that the vote of 
ignorance and crime was as good in any sense as that of wisdom 
and virtue. It only asserts that crime and ignorance have the 
same right to vote that virtue has. Only by allowing that right, 
and so appealing to their sense of justice, and throwing upon 
them the burden of their full responsibility, can we hope ever to 
raise crime and ignorance to the level of self-respect. The right 
to choose your governor rests on precisely the same foundation 
as the right to choose your religion ; and no more arrogant or 
ignorant arraignment of all that i§ noble in th« civil and re- 



582 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

ligious Europe of the last five hundred years ever came from th« 
triple crown on the Seven Hills than this sneer of the bigot 
Scotsman. Protestantism holds up its hands in holy horror, and 
tells us that the Pope scoops out the brains of his churchmen 
saying, " I'll think for you : you need only obey." But the 
danger is, you meet such popes far away from the Seven Hills ; 
and it is sometimes difficult at first to recognize them, for they 
do not by any means always wear the triple crown. 

Evarts and his committee, appointed to inquire why the New 
York City government is a failure, were not wise enough, or did 
not dare, to point out the real cause, the tyranny of that tool of 
the demagogue, the corner grog-shop ; but they advised taking 
away the ballot from the poor citizen. But this provision would 
not reach the evil. Corruption does not so much rot the masses : 
it poisons Congress. Credit Mobilier and money rings are not 
housed under thatched roofs : they flaunt at the Capitol. As 
usual in chemistry, the scum floats uppermost. The railway 
king disdained canvassing for voters : '* It is cheaper," he said, 
" to buy legislatures." 

It is not the masses who have most disgraced our political 
annals. I have seen many mobs between the seaboard and the 
Mississippi. I never saw or heard of any but well-dressed mobs, 
assembled and countenanced, if not always led in person, by 
respectability and what called itself education. That unrivalled 
scholar, the first and greatest New England ever lent to Con- 
gress, signalled his advent by quoting the original Greek of the 
New Testament in support of slavery, and offering to shoulder 
his musket in its defence ; and forty years later the last professor 
who went to quicken and lift the moral mood of those halls is 
found advising a plain, blunt, honest witness to forge and lie, 
that this scholarly reputation might be saved from wreck. Singu- 
lar comment on Landor's sneer, that there is a spice of the 
scoundrel in most of our literary men. But no exacting level 
of property qualification for a vote would have saved those 
stains. In those cases Judas did not come from the unlearned 
class. 

Grown gray over history, Macaulay prophesied twenty years 
ago that soon in these States the poor, w^orse than another inroad 
of Goths and Vandals, would begin a general plunder of the 
ricK It is enough to say that our national funds sell as w#»U in 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 583 

Europe as English consols ; and the universal-suffrage Union 
can borrow money as cheaply as Great Britain, ruled, one half 
by Tories, and the other half by men not certain that they dare 
call themselves Whigs. Some men affected to scoff at democracy 
as no sound basis for national debt, doubting the payment of 
ours. Europe not only w^onders at its rapid payment, but the 
only taint of fraud that touches evea the hem of our garment is 
the fraud of the capitalist cunningly adding to its burdens, and 
increasing unfairly the value of his bonds ; not the first hint 
from the people of repudiating an iota even of its unjust addi- 
tions. 

Yet the poor and the unlearned class is the one they propose 
to punish by disfranchisement. 

No wonder the humbler class looks on the whole scene with 
alarm. They see their dearest right in peril. When the easy 
class conspires to steal, what wonder the humbler class draws 
together to defend itself ? True, universal suffrage is a terrible 
power ; and, with all the great cities brought into subjection to 
the dangerous classes by grog, and Congress sitting to register 
the decrees of capital, both sides may well dread the next move. 
Experience proves that popular governments are the best protec- 
tors of life and property. But suppose they were not, Bancroft 
allows that " the fears of one class are no measure of the rights 
of another." 

Suppose that universal suffrage endangered peace and threat- 
ened property. There is something more valuable than wealth, 
there is something more sacred than peace. As Humboldt says, 
"The finest fruit earth holds up to its Maker is a man." To 
ripen, lift, and educate a man is the first duty. Trade, lav/, 
learning, science, and religion are only the scaffolding where- 
with to build a man. Despotism looks down into the poor man's 
cradle, and knows it can crush resistance and curb ill-will. 
Democracy sees the ballot in that baby-hand ; and selfishness 
bids her put integrity on one side of those baby footsteps and 
intelligence on the other, lest her own hearth be in peril. Thank 
God for His method of taking bonds of wealth and culture to 
share all their blessings with the humblest soul He gives to their 
keeping ! The American should cherish as serene a faith as his 
fathers had. Instead of seeking a coward safety by battening 
down the hatches and putting men back into chains, he should 



584 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

recognize that God places him in this peril that he may work out 
a noble security by concentrating all moral forces to lift this 
weak, rotting, and dangerous mass into sunlight and health. 
The fathers touched their highest level when, with stout-hearted 
and serene faith, they trusted God that it was safe to leave men 
with all the rights He gave them. Let us be worthy of their 
blood, and save this sheet-anchor of the race, — universal suf- 
frage, — God's church, God's school, God's method of gently 
binding men into commonwealths in order that they may at last 
melt into brothers. 

I urge on college-bred men that, as a class, they fail in repub- 
lican duty when they allow others to lead in the agitation of the 
great social questions which stir and educate the age. Agita- 
tion is an old word with a new meaning. Sir Robert Peel, the 
first English leader who felt himself its tool, defined it to be 
" marshalling the conscience of a nation to mould its laws." 
Its means are reason and argument, — no appeal to arms. Wait 
patiently for the growth of public opinion. That secured, then 
every step taken is taken forever. An abuse once removed 
never reappears in history. The freer a nation becomes, the 
more utterly democratic in its form, the more need of this outside 
agitation. Parties and sects laden with the burden of securing 
their own success cannot afford to risk new ideas. " Predomi- 
nant opinions," said Disraeli, " are the opinions of a class that 
is vanishing." The agitator must stand outside of organ?za- 
tions, with no bread to earn, no candidate to elect, no party to 
save, no object but truth, — to tear a question open and riddle it 
with light. 

In all modern constitutional governments, agitation is the 
only peaceful method of progress. Wilberforce and Clarkson, 
Rowland Hill and Romilly, Cobden and John Bright, Garrison 
and O'Connell, have been the master spirits in this new form of 
crusade. Rarely in this country have scholarly men joined, as 
a class, in these great popular schools, in these social move- 
ments which make the great interests of society " crash and 
jostle against each other like frigates in a storm." 

It is not so much that the people need us, or will feel any lack 
from our absence. They can do without us. By sovereign and 
superabundant strength they can crush their way through all 
obstacles. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 585 

" They will march prospering, — not through our presence ; 
Songs will inspirit them, — not from our lyre ; 
Deeds will be done — while we boast our quiescence ; 
Still bidding crouch whom the rest bid aspire." 

The misfortune is, we lose a God-given opportunity of making 
the change an unmixed good, or with the slightest possible share 
of evil, and are recreant beside to a special duty. These " agita- 
tions" are the opportunities and the means God offers us to 
refine the taste, mould the character, lift the purpose, and edu- 
cate the moral sense of the masses, on whose intelligence and 
self-respect rests the State. God furnishes these texts. He 
gathers for us this audience, and only asks of our coward lips to 
preach the sermons. 

There have been four or five of these great opportunities. 
The crusade against slavery — that grand hypocrisy which poi- 
soned the national life of two generations — was one, — a conflict 
between two civilizations which threatened to rend the Union. 
Almost every element among us was stirred to take a part in 
the battle. Every great issue, civil and moral, was involved, — 
toleration of opinion, limits of authority, relation of citizen to 
law, place of the Bible, priest and layman, sphere of woman, 
question of race. State rights and nationality ; and Channing 
testified that free speech and free printing owed their preserva- 
tion to the struggle. But the pulpit flung the Bible at the re- 
former ; law visited him with its penalties ; society spewed him 
cut of its mouth ; bishops expurgated the pictures of their Com- 
mon Prayer-books ; and editors omitted pages in republishing 
English history ; even Pierpont emasculated his class-book ; 
Bancroft remodelled his chapters ; and Everett carried Wash- 
ington through thirty States, remembering to forget the brave 
words the wise Virginian had left on record warning his country- 
men of this evil. Amid this battle of the giants, scholarship sat 
dumb for thirty years until imminent deadly peril convulsed it 
into action, and colleges, in their despair, gave to the army that 
help they had refused to the market-place and the rostrum. 

There was here and there an exception. That earthquake 
scholar at Concord, whose serene word, like a whisper among 
the avalanches, topples down superstitions and prejudices, was 
at his post, and, with half a score of others, made the exception 



586 NVENDELL PHILLIPS. 

that proved the rule. Pulpits, just so far as they could not 
boast of culture, and nestled closest down among the masses, 
were infinitely braver than the " spires and antique towers" of 
stately collegiate institutions. 

Then came reform of penal legislation, — the effort to make 
law mean justice, and substitute for its barbarism Christianity 
and civilization. In Massachusetts Rantoul represents Beccaria 
and Livingston, Mackintosh and Romilly. I doubt if he ever had 
one word of encouragement from Massachusetts letters ; and, 
with a single exception, I have never seen, till within a dozen 
years, one that could be called a scholar active in moving the 
Legislature to reform its code. 

The London Times proclaimed, twenty years ago, that intem- 
perance produced more idleness, crime, disease, want, and 
misery, than all other causes put together ; and the Westminster 
Review calls it a " curse that far eclipses every other calamity 
under which we suffer." Gladstone, speaking as Prime Minister, 
admitted that "greater calamities are inflicted on mankind by 
intemperance than by the three great historical scourges, — war, 
pestilence, and famine." De Quincey says, " The most remark- 
able instance of a combined movement in society which history, 
perhaps, will be summoned to notice, is that which, in our day, 
has applied itself to the abatement of intemperance. Two vast 
movements are hurrying into action by velocities continually 
accelerated, — the great revolutionary movement irom political 
causes concurring with the great physical movement in loco- 
motion and social intercourse from the gigantic power of steam. 
At the opening of such a crisis, had no third movement arisen 
of resistance to intemperate habits, there would have been 
ground of despondency as to the melioration of the human race." 
These are English testimonies, where the State rests more than 
half on bayonets. Here we are trying to rest the ballot-box on 
a drunken people. " We can rule a great city," said Sir Robert 
Peel, " America cannot ;" and he cited the mobs of New York 
as sufficient proof of his assertion. 

Thoughtful men see that up to this hour the government of 
great cities has been with us a failure ; that worse than the dry- 
rot of legislative corruption, than the rancor of party spirit, than 
Southern barbarism, than even the tyranny of incorporated 
wealth, is the giant burden of intemperance, making universal 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 58/ 

suffrage a failure and a curse in every great city. Scholars who 
play statesmen, and editors who masquerade as scholars, can 
waste much excellent anxiety that clerks shall get no office until 
they know the exact date of Caesar's assassination, as well as 
the latitude of Pekin, and the Rule of Three. But while this 
crusade — the temperance movement — has been, for sixty years, 
gathering its facts and marshalling its arguments, rallying 
parties, besieging legislatures and putting great States on the 
witness-stand as evidence of the soundness of its methods, 
scholars have given it nothing but a sneer. But if universal 
suffrage ever fails here for a time, — permanently it cannot fail, 
— it will not be incapable civil service, nor an ambitious soldier, 
nor Southern vandals, nor venal legislatures, nor the greed of 
wealth, nor boy statesmen rotten before they are ripe, that will 
put universal suffrage into eclipse : it will be rum intrenched in 
great cities and commanding every vantage ground. 

Social science affirms that woman's place in society marks the 
level of civilization. From its twilight in Greece, through the 
Italian worship of the Virgin, the dreams of chivalry, the justice 
of the civil law, and the equality of French society, we trace her 
gradual recognition ; while our common law, as Lord Brougham 
confessed, was, with relation to women, the opprobrium of the 
age and of Christianity. For forty years, plain men and women, 
working noiselessly, have washed away that opprobrium ; the 
statute books of thirty States have been remodelled, and woman 
stands to-day almost face to face with her last claim, — the bal- 
lot. It has been a weary and thankless, though successful, 
struggle. But if there be any refuge from that ghastly curse, 
the vice of great cities, — before which social science stands 
palsied and dumb, — it is in this more equal recognition of 
woman. If, in this critical battle for universal suffrage,— our 
fathers' noblest legacy to us, and the greatest trust God leaves 
in our hands, — there be any weapon, which, once taken from 
the armory, will make victory certain, it will be, as it has been 
in art, literature, and society, summoning woman into the polit- 
ical arena. 

But, at any rate, up to this point, putting suffrage aside, there 
can be no difference of opinion : everything born of Christianity, 
or allied to Grecian culture or Saxon law, must rejoice in the 
gain. The literary class, until half a dozen years, has taken 



588 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

note of this great uprising only to fling every obstacle in its way. 
The first glimpse we get of Saxon blood in history is that line of 
Tacitus in his " Germany," which reads, " In all grave matters 
they consult their women." Years hence, when robust Saxon 
sense has flung away Jewish superstition and Eastern prejudice, 
and put under its foot fastidious scholarship and squeamish 
fashion, some second Tacitus, from the Valley of the Mississippi, 
will answer to him of the Seven Hills, " In all grave questions 
we consult our women." 

I used to think that then we could say to letters as Henry of 
Navarre wrote to the Sir Philip Sidney of his realm, Crillon, 
" the bravest of the brave," " We have conquered at Arques, et 
iu ny etais pas, Crillon,'* — " You were not there, my Crillon." 
But a second thought reminds me that what claims to be litera- 
ture has been always present in that battle-field, and always in 
the ranks of the foe. 

Ireland is another touchstone which reveals to us how ab- 
surdly we masquerade in democratic trappings while we have 
gone to seed in lory distrust of the people ; false to every duty, 
which, as eldest-born of democratic institutions, we owe to the 
oppressed, and careless of the lesson every such movement may 
be made in keeping public thought clear, keen, and fresh as to 
principles which are the essence of our civilization, the ground- 
work of all education in republics. 

Sydney Smith said, " The moment Ireland is mentioned the 
English seem to bid adieu to common sense, and to act with the 
barbarity of tyrants and the fatuity of idiots." " As long as the 
patient will suffer, the cruel will kick. ... If the Irish go on 
withholding and forbearing, and hesitating whether this is the 
time for discussion or that is the time, they will be laughed at 
another century as fools, and kicked for another century as 
slaves." Byron called England's union with Ireland " the 
union of the shark with his prey." Bentham's conclusion, from 
a survey of five hundred years of European history, was, " Only 
by making the ruling few uneasy can the oppressed many obtain 
a particle of relief." Edmund Burke — Burke, the noblest figure 
in the Parliamentary history of the last hundred years, greater 
than Cicero in the senate and almost Plato in the academy — 
Burke affirmed, a century ago, " Ireland has learned at last that 
Justice is to be had from England, only when demanded at the 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 589 

sword's point." And a century later, only last year, Gladstone 
himself proclaimed in a public address in Scotland, " England 
never concedes anything to Ireland except when moved to do so 
by fear." 

When we remember these admissions, we ought to clap our 
hands at every fresh Irish "outrage," as a parrot-press styles 
U ; aware that it is only a far-off echo of the musket-shots that 
rattled against the Old State House on March 5th, 1770, and of 
the warwhoop that made the tiny spire of the " Old South" trem- 
ble when Boston rioters emptied the three India tea-ships into the 
sea, — welcome evidence of living force and rare intelligence in 
the victim, and a sign that the day of deliverance draws each 
hour nearer. Cease ringing endless changes of eulogy on the 
men who made North's Boston port-bill a failure while every 
leading journal sends daily over the water wishes for the success 
of Gladstone's copy of the bill for Ireland. If all rightful gov- 
ernment rests on consent, — if, as the French say, you " can do 
almost anything with a bayonet except sit on it," — be at least 
consistent, and denounce the man who covers Ireland with regi- 
ments to hold up a despotism which, within twenty months, he 
has confessed rests wholly upon fear. 

Then note the scorn and disgust with which we gather up our 
garments about us and disown the Sam Adams and William 
Prescott, the George Washington and John Brown, of St. Peters- 
burg, the spiritual descendants, the living representatives, of 
those who make our history worth anything in the world's 
annals, — the Nihilists. 

Nihilism is the righteous and honorable resistance of a people 
crushed under an iron rule. Nihilism is evidence of life. When 
'* order reigns in Warsaw," it is spiritual death. Nihilism is 
the last weapon of victims choked and manacled beyond all 
other resistance. It is crushed humanity's only means of making 
the oppressor tremble. God means that unjust power shall be 
insecure ; and every move of the giant, prostrate in chains, 
whether it be to lift a single dagger or stir a city's revolt, is a 
lesson in justice. One might well tremble for the future of the 
race if such a despotism could exist without provoking the 
bloodiest resistance. I honor Nihilism ; since it redeems human 
nature from the suspicion of being utterly vile, made up only of 
heartless oppressors and contented slaves. Every line in our 



590 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

history, every interest of civilization, bids us rejoice when the 
tyrant grows pale and the slave rebellious. We cannot but pity 
the suffering of any human being, however richly deserved ; 
but such pity must not confuse our moral sense. Humanity 
gains. Chatham rejoiced when our fathers rebelled. For every 
single reason they alleged, Russia counts a hundred, each one 
ten times bitterer than any Hancock or Adams could give 
Sam Johnson's standing toast in Oxford port was, " Success to 
the first insurrection of slaves in Jamaica," a sentiment Southey 
echoed. " Eschew cant," said that old moralist. But of all 
the cants that are canted in this canting world, though the cant 
of piety may be the worst, the cant of Americans bewailing 
Russian Nihilism is the most disgusting. 

I know what reform needs, and all it needs, in a land where 
discussion is free, the press untrammelled, and where public 
halls protect debate. There, as Emerson says, " What the 
tender and poetic youth dreams to-day, and conjures up with 
inarticulate speech, is to-morrow the vociferated result of public 
opinion, and the day after is the charter of nations. Lieber 
said, in 1870, " Bismarck proclaims to-day in the Diet the very 
principles for which we were hunted and exiled fifty years ago." 
Submit to risk your daily bread, expect social ostracism, count 
on a mob now and then, '* be in earnest, don't equivocate, don't 
excuse, don't retreat a single inch," and you will finally be 
heard. No matter how long and weary the waiting, at last, — 

" Ever the truth comes uppermost, 
And ever is justice done. 
For Humanity sweeps onward : 

Where to-day the martyr stands, 
On the morrow crouches Judas 
With the silver in his hands ; 

"' Far in front the cross stands ready. 

And the crackling fagots burn, 
While the hooting mob of yesterday 

In silent awe return 
To glean up the scattered ashes 

Into History's golden urn." 

(bi such a land he is doubly and trebly guilty who, except in 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 59I 

some most extreme case, disturbs the sober rule of law and 
order. 

But such is not Russia. In Russia there is no press, no de- 
bate, no explanation of what Government does, no remonstrance 
allowed, no agitation of public issues. Dead silence, like that 
which reigns at the summit of Mont Blanc, freezes the whole 
empire, long ago described as " a despotism tempered by assas- 
sination." Meanwhile, such despotism has unsettled the brains 
of the ruling family, as unbridled power doubtless made some 
of the twelve Cassars insane : a madman, sporting with the lives 
and comfort of a hundred million of men. The young girl 
whispers in her mother's ear, under a ceiled roof, her pity for a 
brother knouted and dragged half dead into exile for his opin- 
ions. The next week she is stripped naked, and flogged to death 
in the public square. No inquiry, no explanation, no trial, no 
protest, one dead uniform silence, the law of the tyrant. Where 
is there ground for any hope of peaceful change ? Where the 
fulcrum upon which you can plant any possible lever ? 

Macchiavelli's sorry picture of poor human nature would be 
fulsome flattery if men could keep still under such oppression. 
No, no ! in such a land dynamite and the dagger are the neces- 
sary and proper substitutes for Faneuil Hall and the Daily 
Advertiser. Anything that will make the madman quake in his 
bedchamber, and rouse his victims into reckless and desperate 
resistance. This is the only view an American, the child of 1620 
and 1776, can take of Nihilism. Any other unsettles and per- 
plexes the ethics of our civilization. 

Born within sight of Bunker Hill, in a commonwealth which 
adopts the motto of Algernon Sidney, sub liber tate qicieiem 
(" accept no peace without liberty"), — son of Harvard, whose 
first pledge was " Truth," citizen of a republic based on the 
claim that no government is rightful unless resting on the con- 
sent of the people, and which assumes to lead in asserting the 
rights of humanity, — I at least can say nothing else and nothing 
less — no, not if every tile on Cambridge roofs were a devil hoot- 
ing my words ! 

I shall bow to any rebuke from those who hold Christianity to 
command entire non-resistance. But criticism from any other 
quarter is only that nauseous hypocrisy, which, stung by three- 
penny tea-tax, piles Bunker Hill with granite and statues, prat- 



592 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

\ng all the time of patriotism and. broadswords, while, like 
another Pecksniff, it recommends a century of dumb submission 
ftnd entire non-resistance to the Russians, who, for a hundred 
yrears, have seen their sons by thousands dragged to death or 
exile, no one knows which, in this worse than Venetian mystery 
of police, and their maidens flogged to death in the market- 
place, and who share the same fate if they presume to ask the 
reason why. 

'* It is unfortunate," says Jefferson, " that the efforts of man- 
kind to secure the freedom of which they have been deprived 
should be accompanied with violence and even with crime. But 
while we weep over the means, we must pray for the end." 
Pray fearlessly for such ends : there is no risk ! " Men are all 
tories by nature," says Arnold, " when tolerably well ofif : only 
monstrous injustice and atrocious cruelty can rouse them." 
Some talk of the rashness of the uneducated classes. Alas ! 
ignorance is far oftener obstinate than rash. Against one 
French Revolution — that scarecrow of the ages — weigh Asia, 
" carved in stone," and a thousand years of Europe, with her 
half-dozen nations meted out and trodden down to be the dull 
and contented footstools of priests and kings. The customs of 
a thousand years ago are the sheet-anchor of the passing gener- 
ation, so deeply buried, so fixed, that the most violent efforts of 
the maddest fanatic can drag it but a hand's-breadth. 

Before the war Americans were like the crowd in that terrible 
hall of Eblis which Beckford painted for us, — each man with his 
hand pressed on the incurable sore in his bosom, and pledged 
not to speak of it : compared with other lands, we were intel- 
lectually and morally a nation of cowards. 

When I first entered the Roman States, a custom-house official 
seized all my French books. In vain I held up to him a treatise 
by F§nelon, and explained that it was by a Catholic archbishop 
of Cambray. Gruffly he answered, " It makes no difference : 
zV is French." As I surrendered the volume to his remorseless 
grasp, I could not but honor the nation which had made its revo- 
lutionary purpose so definite that despotism feared its very lan- 
guage. I only wished that injustice and despotism everywhere 
might one day have as good cause to hate and to fear everything 
American. 

At last that disgraceful seal of slave complicity is broken. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS, 593 

Let us inaugurate a new departure, recognize that we are afloat 
on the current of Niagara, — eternal vigilance the condition of 
our safety, — that we are irrevocably pledged to the world not to 
go back to bolts and bars, — could not if we would, and would 
not if we could. Never again be ours the fastidious scholarship 
that shrinks from rude contact with the masses. Very pleasant 
it is to sit high up in the world's theatre and criticise the un- 
graceful struggles of the gladiators, shrug one's shoulders at 
the actors* harsh cries, and let every one know that but for 
" this villainous saltpetre you would yourself have been a sol- 
dier." But Bacon says, " In the theatre of man's life, God and 
His angels only should be lookers-on." " Sin is not taken out 
of man as Eve was out of Adam, by putting him to sleep." 
" Very beautiful," says Richter, *' is the eagle when he floats 
with outstretched wings aloft in the clear blue ; but sublime 
when he plunges down through the tempest to his eyry on the 
cliff, where his unfledged young ones dwell and are starving." 
Accept proudly the analysis of Fisher Ames : " A monarchy is 
a man-of-war, stanch, iron-ribbed, and resistless when under 
full sail ; yet a single hidden rock sends her to the bottom. Our 
republic is a raft, hard to steer, and your feet always wet ; but 
nothing can sink her." If the Alps, piled in cold and silence, 
be the emblem of despotism, we joyfully take the ever-restless 
ocean for ours, — only pure because never still. 

Journalism must have more self-respect. Now it praises good 
and bad men so indiscriminately that a good word from nine- 
tenths of our journals is worthless. In burying our Aaron 
Burrs, both political parties — in order to get the credit of mag- 
nanimity — exhaust the vocabulary of eulogy so thoroughly that 
there is nothing left with which to distinguish our John Jays. 
The love of a good name in life and a fair reputation to survive 
us — that strong bond to well-doing — is lost where every career, 
however stained, is covered with the same fulsome flattery, and 
where what men say in the streets is the exact opposite of what 
they say to each other. De mortuis nil nisi bonum most men 
translate, " Speak only good of the dead." I prefer to construe 
it, "Of the dead say nothing unless you can tell something 
good." And if the sin and the recreancy have been marked 
and far-reaching in their evil, even the charity of silence is not 
permissible. 



594 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

To be as good as our fathers we must be better. They 
silenced their fears and subdued their prejudices, inaugurating 
free speech and equality with no precedent on the file. Europe 
shouted ** Madmen !" and gave us forty years for the ship- 
wreck. With serene faith they persevered. Let us rise to their 
level. Crush appetite and prohibit temptation if it rots great 
cities. Intrench labor in sufficient bulwarks against that wealth, 
which, without the tenfold strength of modern incorporation, 
wrecked the Grecian and Roman States ; and, with a sterner 
effort still, summon women into civil life as re-enforcement to 
our laboring ranks in the effort to make our civilization a suc- 
cess. 

Sit not, like the figure on our silver coin, looking ever back* 
ward. 

*' New occasions teach new duties ; 
Time makes ancient good uncouth ; 
They must upward still, and onward. 
Who would keep abreast of Truth. 
Lo 1 before us gleam her camp-fires I 
We ourselves must Pilgrims be, 
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly 
Through the desperate winter sea. 
Nor attempt the Future's portal 
With the Past's blood-rusted key.*' 



INDEX. 



A. 

Adam, William, 131. 

Adams, Charles Francis, 232, 284. 

Adams, John Quincy, 153, 206, 

213. 
Adams, Rev. Dr. Nehemiah, 120. 
Alcott, Bronson, 122. 
Alford, 78. 

Althorp, Robert E., 274. 
American Anti-Slavery Society, 

51, 71, 254, 262, 330, 342, 373- 
Anderson, Major, of Fort Sumter, 

338. 
Andrew, John A., 213, 297, 299. 
Anti-Slavery Bazaar in Boston, 

248. 
Appleton, Thomas Gold, 29, 34, 

49. 
Appleton, William, 227. 
Arabella, The, 15. 
Austin, James Trecothic, 93. 

B. 

Banks, N. P., 281. 
Bartol, Rev. Dr., 437, 452. 
Beecher, Henry Ward, 67, 231, 

331. 338. 

Beecher, Rev. Dr. Lyman, 40, 66. 

Booth, Wilkes, Lincoln's assas- 
sin, 340. 

Boston Female Anti-Slavery So- 
ciety, 59. 

Boston Public Latin School, 34. 



Bowditch, William L., 274, 419. 
Breckcnridge, John C, 302. 
Bright, John, 330. 
British and Foreign Anti-Slavery 

Society, 129, 
Broadway Tabernacle in New 

York, 228. 
Brooks, Preston S., 281. 
Brougham, Lord, 128. 
Brown, " Box," 221. 
Brown, John, 330. 
Buchanan, James, 284, 312. 
Buckingham, Rev. Dr. Edgar, 42. 
Buffum, Arnold, 68. 
Burleigh, Charles C, 107. 
Burns, Anthony, 269. 
Burr, Aaron, 52. 
Butler, Benjamin F., 54, 315, 386. 
Butler, Mrs. Fanny Kemble, 52. 
Butler, Pierce, 52. 
Byron, Lady, 128. 

C. 

Cairnes, Professor, 330. 
Calhoun, John C, 176, 204. 
Channing, Rev. Dr. William 

Ellery, 67, 90, 122, 235. 
Channing, Rev. W. H., 434. 
Chapman, Maria Weston, no. 
Chapman, Mr. and Mrs. Henry 

G., 80. 107, 130. 
Charles L of England, 16. 
Cheever, George B., 170. 



596 



INDEX. 



Chesson, F. W., 330. 
Child, David Lee, 108. • 
Child, Lydia Maria, log, 308. 
Choate, Rufus, 227, 276. 
Clapp, Acting Mayor of Boston, 

305. 
Clarke, Rev. James Freeman, 

406. 
Clarkson, Thomas, 130. 
Clay, Henry, 224, 227. 
Cobden, Richard, 330. 
Congdon, Charles T., 53. 
Craft, William and Ellen, 221. 
Crosby, Rev. Dr. Howard, 455. 
Curriculum of the Boston Latin 

Public School, 35. 
Curtis, Benjamin R., 273, 274. 
Curtis, George William, 247. 

D. 

Dana, Richard H., Jr., 232, 269. 
Davis, Jefiferson, 312. 
Dewey, Rev. Dr. Orville, 261. 
Dickerson, Samuel, 339. 
Dickinson, Anna E., 343. 
Disunion Convention, 284. 
Dom Pedro, 421. 
Duchess of Sunderland, afterward 

of Argyle, 128. 
Douglass, Frederick, 161, 202, 

228, 232, 23s, 315, 343. 369. 

406. 
Douglas, Stephen A., 302. 

E. 

Ellis, Charles, 274. 
Emerson, 298. 
English Abolitionists, II4. 
Evarts, Jeremiah, 67. 
Everett, Edward, 36, 73. 



F. 

Faneuil Hall, 91. 
Faneuil, Peter, 91. 
Fillmore, Millard, 232. 
Fisk, Rev. Wilbur, 174. 
Florida, 209. 

Follen, Charles T. C, 108, 
Folsom, Abigail, 263. 
Fort Sumter, 314. 
Foster, Stephen S., 263. 
Fremont, John C, 283. 
Free-Soil Party, The, 223. 
" Friends, The," 122. 
Froude, James Anthony, 403. 

G. 

Garrison, William Lloyd, 58, 63, 
106, 123, 133, 338, 428. 

Garnaut, Eliza, 217. 

Garnaut, Phoebe, 217. 

*' Genius of Universal Emancipa- 
tion," The, 63, 64. 

Giddings, Joshua R., 284. 

Goodell, William, 170. 

Gould, A. B., 34, 36. 

Gough, John B., 369. 

Grant, U. S., 330, 33^, 363* 399- 

Greeley, Horace, 229, 399. 

Green, Dr. Samuel A., 428. 

Green, Miss Ann Terry, 79. 

Grew, Miss Mary, T38, 

Grimk6, A. H., 55. 

Grimk6, Judge John F., 119. 

Grimk6, Sarah and Angelina, 
119. 

H. 

Hall, Newman, 330. 

Hallet, Benjamin F., 93, 273^ 

274. 
Hallowell, Edward N., 331. 
Hallowell, The Brothers, 303. 



INDEX. 



597 



Harvard College, 38. 
Harvard Law School, The, 49. 
Harvard Washington Corps, The, 

44. 
Hauman, James W., 213. 
Hedge, Rev. Dr., 435. 
Higginson, T. W., 310. 
Hildreth, Richard, 252. 
Hillard, George E., Esq., 93. 
Hoar, 'Squire, of Concord, 160, 

212. 
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 29, 437. 
Holt, Judge, 338. 
Holyoake, George J., 407. 
Hopkinson, Thomas, 54. 
Howe, Julia Ward, 367. 
Howe, Dr. S. G., 213. 
Hughes, Bishop of New York, 

158. 
Hughes, Thomas, 330, 

J- ' 

Jackson, Francis, 107, 123, 274, 

278. 
Jackson, Rev. Dr. Sheldon, 479. 
Jerrold, Douglas, 252. 
Johnson, Andrew, 350, 361. 
Johnson, Oliver, loi, 306. 320, 

345- 

K. 

Kelley, Abby (Foster), 263. 
Keyes, 'Squire, of Concord, 160. 
Kirkland, Rev. Dr. John T., 38. 
Kossuth, Louis, 248. 

L. 
Lafayette, 36. 
Latimer, a mulatto, 164. 
Lawrence, Abbot, 206. 
Lee, Robert E., 293. 
*' Liberator," The, 66. 238. 



Liberty Party, The, 169. 
Lincoln, Abraham, 287, 302, 312, 

335, 340. 
Livermore, Mrs. Mary A., 116, 

406, 475. 
Lord, President of Dartmouth 

College, 175. 
Loring, Ellis Gray, 108. 
Loring, Edward G., 269, 276. 
Louisiana, 205. 
Lovejoy, Rev. Elijah P., 88. 
Lowell, James Russell, 351. 
Lowell, Rev. Dr. Charles, 452. 
Lundy, Benjamin, 63. 
Lyman, Colonel Theodore, 370. 
Lyman, Mayor of Boston, 59. 

M. 

Mann, Horace, 260. 

Manning, Rev. Dr. J. M., 298. 

Marcy, W. L., Governor of New 
York, 73. 

Martineau, Harriet, 130, 475. 

Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Soci- 
ety, 125, 168. 

Mathew, Father, 134. 

May, Rev. Samuel J., 106, 273, 

274, 343. 
McCarthy, Justin, 330. 
McDuffie, Governor of South 

Carolina, 72. 
Mercantile Library Association 

of Boston, 223. 
Mill, Mrs. John Stuart, 236. 
Mill, John Stuart, 330. 
Milmore, Martin, 376. 
Missouri Compromise, The, 205. 
Morison, Rev. Dr., 46. 
Motley, J. Lothrop, 28, 34, 39, 

49, 399- 
Mott, Lucretia, 130, 235. 
Municipal Court of Boston, 22. 



598 



INDEX. 



N. 

National Philanthopist," The, 

63. 

Nasby, Petroleum V., 362. 

Nebraska Bill, The, 267. 

New England Anti-Slavery Soci- 
ety, 70, 112, 124, 168. 

" Newburyport Free Press," The, 
63. 

Noel, Baptist, 330. 

O. 

O'Connell, Daniel, 128, 134, 155. 
Otis, Harrison Gray, 22, 36, 219. 
Otis, James, gi. 

P. 

Park, John C, 58. 

Parker, Theodore, 122, 215, 228. 
232, 247, 251, 273, 300. 

Papists, 16. 

Party, The Union, 302. 

Phelps, Rev. Amos, 108. 

Phillips, George William, 274. 

Phillips, Hon. John, 21. 

Phillips, Hon. Jonathan, 93, 122. 

Phillips, John, founder of the 
Phillips Academy in Exeter, ig. 

Phillips, John, the goldsmith, 20. 

Phillips, Judge, ig. 

Phillips, Mrs. John {itie Sally 
Walley), 21, 30, 31, 37, 38. J^^ 

Phillips, Rev. George, 15. "">-^'^ 

Phillips, Rev. SaRu|) >«. 2 3 £ 

Phillips, Rev. Samuel (4th gen- 
eration), ig. 

Phillips, Samuel and John, found- 
ers of the Phillips Academy in 
Andover, ig. 

Phillips, Samuel, merchant ; 18. 

Phillips, Wendell. 2/1. — Paternal 



home, 25. — Preaching to chairs, 
27. — Childhood friends, 28. — 
Revolutionary traditions, 31. — 
First educational advantages, 
34. — Becomes the friend of 
Charles Sumner, 34. — Loves 
athletic exercises, 35. — An at- 
tractive elocutionist at school, 
36. — Matriculates in Harvard 
College, 37. — The friend of 
Quincy, 3g. — Consecrates him- 
self to God, 41. — His standing 
and classmates at college, 46. — 
Heard Daniel Webster for the 
first time, 48. — Graduated, 48. 
— Entered the Harvard Law 
School, 4g. — Admitted to the 
bar, 52. — Meets Trelawny, 52. 
— A trip to Philadelphia, 52. — 
Acts as cicerone to Aaron Burr, 
53. — First public honors, 53. — • 
Opens a law office, 54. — Wit- 
nesses the Garrison mob, 58. — 
His attention drawn to the 
weakness of the law against 
popular prejudices, 60. — Forms 
the acquaintance of Miss Ann 
Green, 7g. — Becomes personal- 
ly acquainted with Garrison, 80. 
— His first Anti-Slavery speech, 
82. — His marriage, 86. — First 
speech in Faneuil Hall, g5. — 
His career as lecturer, 114. — 
A member of "the Friends," 
122. — General agent of the 
Massachussetts Anti-Slavery 
Society, 123. — Makes a trip to 
Europe, 125. — Agitating the 
emancipation of woman, 133. — 
Garrison honors him, naming 
his new-born son Wendell 
Phillips, 142. — Returns from 



INDEX. 



599 



Europe, 148. — Addresses a 
large audience upon the occa- 
sion of O'Connell's appeal to 
the Irish in United States, 155. 
— Antagonizes the Constitu- 
tion, 165 — His method as an 
agitator, 180. — Effecting the 
abolition of caste schools in 
Boston, 202. — Arguing against 
capital punishment, 214. — 
Stabbing the clergy with in- 
terrogation marks, 220. — De- 
nouncing Kossuth's reticence 
on the question of slavery, 249. 
— Assisting in the formation of 
a moral reform society, 251. — 
Arrested for obstructing the 
process of the United States, 
273. — Signed the call for a Dis- 
union Convention, 284. — Oc- 
cupies Theodore Parker's pul- 
pit, 300. — Becomes a Union 
man, 315. — Organizes colored 
regiments, 331. — Refuses a 
nomination to Congress, 354. — 
Pleads for Female Suffrage, 361. 
— Advocates Labor Reform, 
368. — Urges the cause of Tem- 
perance. — Nominated for Gov- 
ernor of Massachusetts by the 
Labor Reform and Temperance 
parties, 382. — In sympathy with 
the Irish cause, 403. — His views 
on finance, 412. — Religious 
views, 43 J-439. — Deals a blow 
to Harvard College, 463. — His 
last effort as an orator, 475. — 
The last words of public con- 
cern traced by his pen, 479. — 
Leaves this world, 481. — Burial 
and tributes to, vide Book IV., 
Chap. IV. — Estimate as an 



orator, lb. Chap. V. — As a 
man, lb. Chap. VI. — Phillip- 
siana, lb. Chap. VII. 

Phillips, William, 20. 

Peace Congress, The, 306. 

Pease, Miss Elizabeth, 129. 

Pierce, Franklin, 254, 313. 

Piers, Rev. John Tappen, 45. 

Pierson, John H., 213. 

Pillsbury, Parker, 263. 

Powell, Mr. and Mrs. Aaron, 361, 

Prelatists, 16. 

Prescott, W. H., 227. 

Puritans, 16. 

Purvis, Robert, 343. 

Q. 

Quincy, Edmund, 39, log, 201, 

343. 
Quincy, Josiah, 24, 38, 232. 
Quotations from Pro-Slavery 

papers, 72. 

R. 

Redpath, James, 56. 
Remond, Charles Lenox, 343. 
Republican Party, Organization 

of the, 283. 
Revels, Senator from Georgia, 

374. 
Rynders, Captain, 228, 246. 

S. 
Salem, 17. 
Sargent, Rev. John T., 235, 251, 

370, 416, 417, 421, 431. 
Scott, Dred, 286. 
Scott, General Winfield, 3i> 
Schurz, Carl, 413. 
Sewall, Samuel E., 108, 228. 
Seward, William H., 28q» ^87, 

302, 351. 



6oo 



INDEX. 



Shadrach, a fugitive slave, 243. 

Sharp, Graneville, 173. 

Shaw, Judge, of Boston, 164. 

Shaw, Robert G., 331. 

Sims, Thomas, a fugitive slave, 

246. 
Smith, Gerrit, 170, 246, 330. 
Smith, Goldwin, 330. 
** Sons of Liberty," The, gi. 
Spencer, Herbert, 330. 
Spooner, Lysander, 216. 
Sprague, Peleg, 219. 
"Standard," The, 152. 
Stone, Mrs. Lucy, 406. 
Story, Judge, 49. 
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 67, 252. 
Stuart, Professor Moses, 175,227. 
Sumner, Charles, 34, 39, 49, 55, 

78, 213, 232, 274, 281, 366, 399. 
Sturge, Joseph, 130. 

T. 

Taney, Chief Justice, 286. 

Tappan, Arthur, 65. 

Taylor, General, 232. 

Texas, The annexation of, 206. 

Thatcher, Rev. Moses, 108. 

Thayer, Dr. David, 308. 

Thompson, George, 128, 145, 

237» 253, 330. 338. 
Ticknor, George, 201, 227. 



Torrey, Rev. Charles T., 2Mi 
Toussaint L'Ouverture, 331. 
Trelawny, 52. 
Tyndale, General, 340. 

W. 

Walker, Amasa, 284. 

Ward, Rev. Samuel, 230. 

Wayland, Rev. Dr., 175. 

Webb, Richard D., 129. 

Webster, Daniel, 214, 226. 

Weiss, John, 435. 

Weld, T. D., 74, 120. 

Wells, Hon. David A., 427. 

Wesley, John, 88. 

Whittier, John G., 68, 107, 120 

421. 
Wightman, Mayor, of Boston, 

307. 
Whig Party, The, 223. 
Willard, Miss Frances E., 406. 
Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, 209. 
Wilson, Senator Henry, 284, 338, 

339. 

Wise, Henry A., Governor of 
Virginia, 342. 

Women's Rights Convention, 
National, 247. 

Woods, Rev. Dr. Leonard, 227. 

World's Anti-Slavery Conven- 
tion, Z28, 129. 



'^^ 



1 










r<^ 



^, 






4 



X- 






S^ 




■t- 



,f 



av ^,<* :m^^ 



:i.:" 
















.^'^-. 



O N O 



V 









,^' 







^°-J 






^'<07ji^S ^^ 






^ ^."•^'^•;.^^' 












4 o^ 



.^ - o V 



i^' 



' O N O ,0 




. <Sy . o N o ^ <^ , 




.^^^ 



x^ 







>P'^^. 



^' 




0' 



.-^^^ 












<>, 



,*^q. 



^^m^:. ^ j^ 

v^- ^v^ 




.^^ 



i^ 



V 



Vv^. 



. °^m^'' .^ -^< 







"o V^ 








OBBS BROS. 

RARY BINOINa 






.f' 









AUGUSTINE 
^^ FLA. ^^' 



'^ A> 










